News
Asset Managers Drive Investment Market
Despite the economic downturn...more
Rockspring targets Staines and Leeds sites
Rockspring continues its advance on the regions this week...more
Planning consent for Huntercombe Park
An Exton Estates and SWIP joint venture has received planning consent for a 90,000 sq ft office development...more
LaSalle and Exton acquires 30 acre site in Manor Royal, Crawley
26.09.2011
LONDON 22 September 2011 – LaSalle Investment Management (‘LaSalle’)...more
Velocity Takes Off at Brooklands Weybridge
13.09.2011
Exton Estates, funded by Rockspring, have commenced construction on the striking new headquarters office development...more
Velocity Gains Speed at Brooklands Weybridge
25.05.11
Exton Estates, funded by Rockspring, have successfully received planning consent for a striking new headquarters office development...more
Velocity Gains Speed at Brooklands Weybridge
25.05.11
Exton Estates, funded by Rockspring, have successfully received planning consent for a striking new headquarters office development...more
Exton in institutional funding double
Property Week 14.01.11
Exton Estates has secured funding for two south-east office developments that total 200,000 sq ft, as institutions continue to show appetite for development in the region...more
Race off the Recession - Property week 03.04.09
Exton Estates founders Stuart Bedford and James Mawson are toughening up to distract themselves from the horrible markets....more
Hammerson picks Exton in Staines - Property week 06.02.09
Hammerson has selected Exton Estates as development manager on a 60,000 sq ft office scheme in Staines, Surrey...more
French victory for punters - Property week 26.07.08
A gruelling cross-Channel cycle ride has been followed by a hot denial.
After three days’ riding. The Property Punters team reached the Eiffel Tower...more
The Crunch Bunch - Property Week 23.05.08
Exton Estates director Stuart Bedford is less sanguine about the situation. ‘The credit crunch has definitely had an impact...more
Ain’t no mountain high enough - Property Week 05.10.07
They must be putting something in the water over at Exton Estates...more
Exton’s Essex Expansion - 05.10.07
Exton Estates has bought a site in Loughton, Essex, to develop a £50m data centre...more
Damian Hirst buys studio - Property Week 14.09.07
Damian Hirst has bought a new studio off the Old Kent Road in south-east London...more
Sheds - Small units - Property Week 23.02.07
Exton Estates, once a champion of the small-industrial freehold market, is now moving away from the sector towards freehold offices...more
Glengall gets consent - Property week 26.05.06
Royal London and Exton Estates have received detailed planning consent for the 100,000 sq ft...more
Rising in the East - Property Week 06.05.06
Bigging it up - Having quickly become experts in the “short sharp shock” school of financial operations, Exton Estates is seeking to spread
its wings...more
Two up, four down - Property Week 19.11.04
Exton Estates, formed by two former Berkeley developers, has already notched up four lucrative warehousing projects....more
Rising in the East - Property Week 06.05.06
Bigging it up - Having quickly become experts in the “short sharp shock” school of financial operations, Exton Estates is seeking to spread its wings beyond its early operations in London’s East End. David Crawford reports.
Described by King Sturge’s Tim Johnson as “an aggressive little company”, Mayfair-based Exton Estates is flexing its muscles after putting through a series of small, quickfire schemes at the small end of the London-region sheds market. These have won attention from institutional investors and are encouraging Exton to diversify.
Two of the four directors, Stuart Bedford and James Mawson, met as members of the development and management team at the Berkeley Commercial arm of housebuilder the Berkeley Group. Here, they worked on the Gunwharf Quays residential, retail and leisure scheme in Portsmouth.
Fashionably tireless during working hours, they recall finding a shared desire to be their own masters, and for short, sharp turnarounds instead of long-term programmes. They left Berkeley in April 2002 to go it alone, bringing in Kevin McGowan, who had worked with Hammerson, as had Mawson; and, as finance director, Richard Hutchinson, one-time CFO Europe of executive search consultant Korn/Ferry International.
Exton gained financial backing, via a Hammerson contact, from London Private Capital to get its first schemes off the ground. “Now” says Bedford, ‘institutions like Royal London Asset Management are talking to us.’
The launch scheme was the 2-acre Honywood Road Business Park in Basildon, Essex. One month after opening shop, Exton bought the long leasehold industrial site on the Cranes Industrial Estate, Basildon, at auction and negotiated a lease surrender.
Paving the way
In May 2002, the company gained planning consent for a speculative 42,600 sq ft scheme of 11 units - nine standard small sheds and two ‘business unit’ variants, with first-floor offices above warehousing. Mawson says: ‘We presold them all off plan at prices that we reckon were the best achieved in Basildon for 15 years.’
Next, Exton bought a 5-acre site from Royal Sun & Alliance at Hanger Lane Business Park in Ealing, West London. This followed an informal tendering process during which the parties exchange contracts to purchase within seven days.
On part of the site, Exton planned eight small standard units and one large business unit. Executive accommodation specialist Manhattan Properties, which had wanted to buy the site, acquired the business unit and an adjoining standard shed, adding a mezzanine floor to the latter to create its new office-and-showroom complex - a type of use that Exton is now targeting elsewhere.
On the rest of the site, Exton signed a pre-leasing commitment to Selco Trade Centres for a trade-counter builders’ merchants, on a 20-year lease. This needed negotiation of a sui generis planning consent with Ealing Council and, again, Exton now wants to use the experience to identify similar opportunities.
For its third acquisition, Exton went back to the less competitive East End of London. They decided to test the market for a 100% business unit scheme, on a 1-acre sliver of land, sourced off-market on ProLogis Park East London, in Bromley-By-Bow.
Mawson admits, ‘Looking back, it was a no-brainer. But at that time, we felt we were making a bold decision. We did some research and found that no one had developed speculative business units in East London for at least a decade - so there was a potential gap in the market. Our agent, DE and J Levy, told us to expect half the level of enquiries we could rely on for standard sheds. But we felt that we had the right location, and decided to trust our judgement.
Exton gained planning consent for 34,000 sq ft in eight units, all presold, grouped round a landscaped courtyard and designed by its retained architect, Michael Sparks Associates - a former industrial category winner in the Architect of the Year Awards. Sparks says: “We vet their sites in advance to check the feasibility of layouts - which are crucial, given the scale at which they have been operating.”
Mawson says: “The design quality we aim for does add a premium to the price - anything between 10% and 20%. But our buyers particularly in east London and Essex, tend to be the kind of business people who are proud of what they are doing. They want their own ‘castle’ and they are willing to pay for it.”
Exton’s most recent consent is for Glengall Business Centre off the Old Kent Road, one the firm’s first ventures south of the Thames. The 100,000 sq ft scheme is for 13 two-storey business units, for leasing and sale, due for completion later this year.
Venturing South
Exton already has its eye on a site in the north east M25 quadrant for Olympic refugee businesses squeezed out of traditional east London locations. It is also planning to move into out-of-London HQ offices. These are likely to be for leasing and for sale, as Bedford and Mawson seek to build an investment portfolio.
Agents watching them support the move. Cushman and Wakefields’s industrial partner Mark Webster says: ‘Their eye for detail should see them through. They have had good success with some minute sites. But these have made that market more competitive, and they need to move up the scale.”