Maya Capital looks ‘outside London’ with £100m strategy

The London-based private equity firm plans to deploy £100m of equity on office buildings in regional cities across the UK.

Maya Capital, the London-based real estate and private equity investment firm, has teamed up with a large Europe-based asset manager to deploy £100 million (€135 million; $154 million) of equity on office buildings outside London and London ring road the M25.

Maya Capital closed its first investment for the strategy last week with a £6 million acquisition in Swansea. The Swansea investment consists of the purchase of a 66,800 square foot office building let entirely to the UK government’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) with 4.5 years of lease remaining. The deal was struck at a net initial yield of 10 percent.

Additional transactions are expected to be completed in the coming months to reach a total deployment of £100 million by the end of 2015. The aim for the partners is to build a portfolio of UK secondary office assets that are worth more together than alone, due to their complementary risk profiles and investors’ current appetite for larger investment size, according to Maya.

“While all time low yields start to plateau in London and its immediate vicinity, today’s announcement highlights the growing investor appetite for a regional strategy outside M25,” David Pralong, managing partner of Maya Capital, commented.

Maya has previously invested £15 million in the UK, including the acquisition and sale of Countryside House, an office building in Brentwood in the summer of 2014; and the acquisition of 160-163 Friar Street, an office building in Reading in October 2014.