Shopping centre is up for sale at £3.5m
Property group have only owned it for year
THE Rochdale Exchange Shopping Centre is officially up for sale.
Current owners Martin Property Group have put the 5.9 hectare site up for auction only a year after purchasing the complex for a guide price of £3.5m.
Covering 284,000 sq ft, the shopping centre takes up a huge area of central Rochdale.
Furthermore, the site contains space for 732 cars in a multi-storey car park.
Over 40 retailers call the centre home including shops, cafes, travel agents as well as a gym.
Well-known tenants include Costa, Poundland, Iceland, Holland & Barrett, Greggs and Home Bargains.
With a guide price of £3.5m the property has a gross initial yield of 51.49 per cent, according to the auctioneers.
This means the shopping complex generates just over half of its guide price from a year’s income of rent, standing at £1.8m.
Auctioneers Allsop described the location as a prominent town centre scheme situated in the heart of the town centre with frontages onto multiple roads.
Allsop also hinted at the potential for future large-scale redevelopment of the site.
Constructed in the 1970s the building is almost half a century old and therefore could be a desirable site for renovation, they say.
Reports from previous sales showed the centre had been worth £19m back in 2013.
The Northern Ireland based property company has a portfolio spanning the UK and Ireland.
These include Grosvenor Shopping Centre in Chester, Fishergate Shopping Centre in Preston and Garden Square Shopping Centre in Letchworth.
Rochdale Exchange is not the only property being relinquished by Martin Property Group.
Last month the company put Glovers Walk in Yeovil up for sale with an equally low guide price of £1.75m.
It is almost three years to the day when it was announced one of Rochdale’s other shopping centres, the Wheatsheaf, was going to close for good. This was primarily as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
It remains to be seen what an interested buyer might do with the commercial area if a sale is agreed.
Martin Property Group and Allsop are yet to give comment.