Rapidly growing awareness among investors of the lucrative returns available through investment in blue-chip commercial property in the UK has seen the most recent investment offered by the Athanor Offshore Property/ Pam Golding Commercial JV oversubscribed in just one week, by both local and international investors.

The carefully handpicked building, 65 High Street, Exeter, secured by the JV after exhaustive research, is an attractive historic building, extremely well situated in a prime location right opposite the entrance to the Guildhall shopping centre and adjacent to one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in Europe.

Exeter (170 miles south west of London) is an affluent and dynamic, university city with a strong demographic profile. It is the principle administrative and commercial centre for Devon, and also ranked the 36th strongest retail centre in the UK. Exeter has also been shown to be in the top 10 most profitable locations for a business to be based.

Comments Eric Mounier, who heads up the Athanor/Pam Golding Commercial JV:

"This landmark, quality building provides investors with access to a secure investment with a high calibre tenant. It has a fully repairing and insuring new lease of 15 years, which means that maintenance and insuring obligations rest on the tenant, and upward only rent reviews every five years.

"The tenant, Lets Go Travel Ltd, is one of the UK's largest privately owned travel agency groups, founded 20 yrs ago and awarded Travel Agent of the Year in 2001. Retail vacancy levels in Exeter are negligible. Surrounding retailers in this prime, high-traffic area include McDonalds, HMV, Stead & Simpson, Woolworths, BHS, Sainsburys, Natwest, Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester, H Samuel and Burger King,"

Mounier says there is also the strong possibility of a portion of the building being sub-let to another blue chip tenant, which would further augment the value of the property. "Projected returns are an attractive 12.5 percent per annum or 65.4 percent over five years. In addition, the interest rate we secured for investors was lower than expected -fixed at 6.15 percent it was below the budgeted figure of 6.4 percent - making the investment even more attractive."

He reports that the steady growth and performance of the UK retail property sector is set to continue. Commercial property has delivered positive returns every year over the past 10 years, and there are a number of reasons for believing that it will continue to deliver solid returns. "Property is the highest yielding of the mainstream asset types. This underpins its popularity and should continue to be a beneficial factor. At present, demand for investment property is high and there is a lack of supply.

"Demand for UK property is not limited to UK investors - overseas buyers are attracted by the high yields and secure income streams that UK commercial property offers. Aside from investor enthusiasm, another driver of the supply/demand balance is the UK's well-known restrictive planning laws, which have often made it difficult or impossible to expand property supply in certain sectors, particularly retail. As a result, there is currently a relatively limited supply of investment attractive new commercial property,"

says Mounier.

He adds: "As is common knowledge the general state of the economy influences the property market. The Treasury budget predictions for 2005 are that the UK economic growth will be above the long-term trend, indicating prospective growth which bodes well for the property market as it should lead to increased tenant demand. There are already signs that in one of the most depressed areas, central London office property, demand for space has begun to increase."

Ends

Issued by Gaye de Villiers

Tel: 021 6837788 or 083 325 1939

On behalf of Pam Golding Commercial/ Athanor Investments