Office-to-resi lots help Allsop Residential notch up £71.3m

Allsop raised £71.3m at its residential sale last week, its highest September total on record. The result, which came with an 80% success rate, puts the firm more than £12m ahead of its 2016 September sale. Gary Murphy, partner and auctioneer, said the catalogue’s multi-million-pound stock was the biggest crowd puller, highlighting a trend that his firm has seen emerge at successive sales.  The largest lot to sell in the room was multi-let office building Albion House, NW9, guided at £2.5m. The 9,633 sq ft building was offered with permitted development rights for conversion to 17 flats. It sold for £3.2m. A 3.93-acre site at Hitchin Road Industrial Estate in Arlesey, Bedfordshire – occupied by a 22,572 sq ft office and seven warehouses totalling 40,861 sq ft – was sold, with permitted development granted for 39 flats on behalf of Anglian Water, for £2.95m from a guide of £2m. A rare opportunity to buy a house in St Ives, Cornwall, produced a sale price of £1.4m from a guide of £625,000-plus. The unmodernised, three-bedroom house was sold on behalf of Devon & Cornwall Housing Association. Murphy said: “Despite all that’s been thrown in the path of buyers over the past year, the market is anything but inactive.” “As ever, our challenge is to match reserves to buyer sentiment. But get that right and the sky’s the limit.”