Croft’s Martley completes £60m Birmingham office purchase

3 Aug 2026 | 07:00 | London | by Janaire Einstein Francisco

Acquisition the Lewis Building and Priory Court form part of firm’s UK regional office investment strategy.

What Martley Capital completes the £60m purchase of the Lewis Building and Priory Court in Birmingham

Why Acquisitions form part of firm’s UK regional office investment strategy

What next The assets were bought into the Martley Capital Regional Office series of funds

Martley Capital has confirmed the purchase of the Lewis Building and Priory Court in Birmingham for around £60m, reflecting a yield of more than 11.6%.

The acquisition price represents approximately 50% of replacement cost, providing an opportunistic entry point into one of the UK’s strongest regional markets.

The assets were bought into the Martley Capital Regional Office (MCRO) series of funds. They were launched for sale for £73m through CBRE in March 2025, on behalf of receivers. Green Street News revealed in September last year that both assets had entered receivership, after owner Gulf Islamic Investments (GII) breached loan covenants.

In July, Green Street News revealed that the investor was in exclusivity with German bank Deka to acquire the properties. Martley stepped forward after a previous deal with PineBridge Benson Elliot stalled.

The assets are let to 14 tenants and spans around 254,000 sq ft of office and retail accommodation. It generates a total annual passing rent of around £7m, with a WAULT of more than seven years.

The Ministry of Justice occupies all of the 141,000 sq ft Priory Court, with the lease running until 2034 at a rent of £4.8m a year. The Lewis Building was refurbished in 2017 to upgrade its 112,000 sq ft of office space.

The business plan for the Lewis Building is centred on proactive asset management, including leasing vacant accommodation, lease regears and targeted capital investment to further enhance the building’s amenity offering.

The purchase of the Lewis building takes total deployment in the MCRO platform to over £110m. Martley is targeting £500m of gross investment for the platform over the next 12 months.

Martley expects these initiatives to drive a significant increase in rental income over the investment period while positioning the asset to benefit from continued rental growth across Birmingham’s office market.

The acquisition follows Martley’s purchase of three regional offices in Newcastle, Chester and Liverpool earlier this year for its MCRO I Fund, as well as the purchase of 4 Temple Row, Birmingham late in 2025.

The purchase of the Lewis building takes total deployment in the MCRO platform to over £110m. Martley is targeting £500m of gross investment for the platform over the next 12 months.

Rory Finnan, head of transactions at Martley Capital, said: “We continue to see value in the UK regional office market. Occupational markets are strengthening, prime rents are growing and the supply of high-quality office space is becoming increasingly constrained, yet investment pricing continues to reflect historically weak sentiment rather than underlying fundamentals.”

Richard Croft, chief executive at Martley Capital, added: “The regional office opportunity is similar in construct to the industrial opportunity in 2010 and the retail warehouse opportunity in 2020. The occupational market is behaving in a markedly different manner to the investment market as was the case with the previous opportunities in Industrial and retail warehouse sectors, which I believe will at some point lead to renewed investor interest in the sector.

“While I have remained a long time exponent of regional offices, I accept that many investors remain unconvinced that work from home and AI will not substantially impact demand, which is what is giving us this opportunity. I happen to believe that WFH has morphed to a more office friendly agile working requirement and that AI, while it will have an impact, could lead to substantially enhanced productivity that in turn could cause an upswing in the economy.

“Regardless of that though, the construction inflation that the market has experienced over the last five years coupled with the impact of ESG and permitted development means that there has been a substantial reduction in stock over the last 10 years. We expect that reduction to continue and that provides a substantial mitigant to any demand impact – which is why we are seeing record rental growth in the sector”.