Coffer Corporate Leisure has advised a private client on the investment sale of 202 Camden High Street – a well-known pub trading as Bucks Head.

The property is let to Stonegate Pub Company, the UK’s largest pub company, on a long index-linked lease.

The price of £4.1 million reflected a 4.1% Net Initial Yield.

Mark Sheehan, Managing Director at Coffer Corporate Leisure, said “It has been a tough 12 months for most property sectors – especially the leisure sector which has never faced a challenge of this magnitude before. Understandably, transaction volumes in the sector over this period have dropped significantly. Investors had typically adopted a “wait and see” approach amidst frequently changing government restrictions.

Despite this backdrop, we are already seeing expectations that leisure and hospitality will open again safely and without restrictions, and the huge pent-up demand will mean the recovery will be swift and sharp.

We witnessed green shoots of investment activity towards the end of last year and the past two months have led to a flurry of transactions. In this period, we have advised on the transaction of over £100 million of leisure property. We expect the market to gain momentum as restrictions are eased, culminating in a very active summer.

It is a great indicator of the resilience of the pub sector that, despite its toughest trading period in modern history, we have seen few, if any, of the restructuring processes that have become such commonplace in the retail and casual dining sectors over the past 12 months.

There are many investors seeking assets in the public house sector, and despite the aforementioned challenges many investors look to the longer term and fully expect good operators to recover quickly and pubs to remain good long-term assets as the fabric of society. There is a wall of money out there looking to invest.

Our pipeline is strong, and we will be launching further sales over the coming months and expect to obtain excellent results.”

Coffer Corporate Leisure acted for the vendor, a private client. Lewis & Partners acted for the purchaser, a private individual.