English Rose Estates
The Strand High Street Kensington High Street Kensington

English Rose Estates Spends £50m Of £300m Warchest In Just Two Months

English Rose Estates has unveiled ambitious plans to spend £300m on property acquisitions this year and in the first two months of the year has already spent £50m with four transactions.

English Rose Estates director Ockert van den Berg said: "Our investment drive this year is based on a core strategy of buying good value assets in well established areas and transforming them into luxury apartments."

"We have a real appetite for residential-led mixed-use scheme but will also look to opportunistically invest in assets which have strong regeneration returns across offices, retail and hotels where we can create added value through our planning development and asset management expertise."

English Rose Estates' latest £20m purchase is of 37 apartments at 47-53 and 59-63 Rupert Street W1 in the heart of London's Soho. It bought the residential properties from a private client of Levy. English Rose Estates is planning a stylish luxury transformation to create a £30m scheme of 11 studio flats, 19 one-bedroom flats and four two-bedroom flats of between118 and 649 sq ft. Refurbishment works are expected to begin when the buildings become vacant in six months time.

Rupert Street was a cash purchase which exchanged in just four days. Van den Berg said: “One of our advantages in acting for ourselves is that we can make decisions fast and exchange and complete in a very short period of time”.

This latest purchase follows on from the acquisition of nearby 21-22 Poland Street W1 by the Fitzrovia-based developer. It bought this five-storey block from Royal London Asset Management for £8.25m. English Rose Estates plans to convert the upper offices into apartments after Westminster City Council supported a conversion in a formal pre-application procedure undertaken by Royal London.

Fletcher Crane Architects prepared a scheme for Royal London that would convert the upper floors into eight flats totalling 5,300 sq ft creating a conversion with a GDV of around £16m. Colliers International advised English Rose Estates and Hanover Green acted for Royal London. English Rose Estates acted for itself on Rupert Street.