Central London office developers and owners Great Portland Estates and Helical have announced rent collection levels for the final quarter of 2020.
Great Portland Estates
Great Portland Estates, which has developed and owned some of the best located offices in the capital, has received 65% of rent due for this quarter.
The majority of the shortfall came from its retail, leisure and hospitality tenants (which often occupy the ground floor units of its offices). Collectively these tenants have so far paid just 28% of rent due.
Office tenants have so far paid 85% of rent due. Overall, Great Portland has received 65% of rent due for the quarter in the seven working days since the due date fell on 29 September.
The group said it holds rent deposits and bank guarantees totalling £18.5m and anticipates that it will be able to utilise £1.9m against outstanding rent.
It added that all its offices were open, with levels of occupation currently around 27% of full occupancy.
For the previous two quarters, the company said it has collected 69% of the £43.7m combined rent billed. It has utilised rent deposits to bring this number up to 82%. £8.3m remains outstanding and Great Portland will categorise this amount as estimated non-recovery in its forthcoming half year results.
Helical
Helical said it had now collected 84% of the September quarter rents demanded to date, compared to 77% and 85% at the corresponding dates for June and March, respectively. It anticipates between 90% and 96% of this quarter’s rent will be collected by the end of December.
For the April to June quarter it has now collected 94.7% of contracted rent (of the balance, 2.4% granted rent holiday and 2.9% still outstanding) and for the July to September quarter 91.3% (with 0.1% under payment plans to be received shortly, 4.6% granted rent holiday and 4.0% outstanding).
GPOR : HLCL : London office landlords reveal rent collection figures