land securities says property market has ‘turn

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aLgF5LcMmJP8&pos=6

By Peter Woodifield

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. commercial-property market started to recover earlier than expected, according to Land Securities Group Plc, the country’s largest real estate investment trust by market value.

“The market has turned quite sharply and positively, which has surprised us to a degree,” Chief Executive Officer Francis Salway said today on a conference call. “The turning point came earlier than we expected and we are just having a short moment when we have got very few sellers.”

The London-based company, which has as much as 1 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) available for acquisitions and developments, has made offers or proposals to buy 500 million pounds of assets, Salway said on the call. So far, none of them has led to a transaction.

Commercial-property values in the U.K. rose 1.9 percent in October from September, the biggest monthly gain since December 2005 and the third straight increase after more than two years of declines, Investment Property Databank Ltd. said Nov. 16. They’re still down 42 percent from the market’s peak.

Land Securities fell 4.5 pence to 710 pence at 10:11 a.m. in London trading.

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Woodifield in Edinburgh at [email protected].