The acquisition of St Magnus House in Aberdeen illustrates our willingness to look beyond conventional investment thinking and highlights our alternative perspective on the market.
The prominent Granite City property is an 80,000 sq ft office building located next to Union Street railway station, offering harbour views and 124 on-site parking spaces.
On behalf of a client, Maritime acquired it for £4.75 million, with around £600,000 set aside for tenant improvements.
This brought the net purchase price to approximately £4.15 million, or about £52 per square foot.
The majority of the property is let to Canadian Natural Resources, a long-term blue chip energy tenant occupying five of the six floors.
The lease runs until 2030, with the option to extend until 2035 but the ability for the tenant to renounce two floor plates.
At present, the building generates £1.48 million in annual rent, delivering a gross yield of around 36 per cent on our investment.
For us, however, St Magnus House was never just about its yield.
It reflects our belief that property investment should not and cannot be reduced to a cold spreadsheet exercise.
The building offers wider opportunities, from potential conversion to residential use and the addition of extra floors, to the revenue stream that could be generated by its parking spaces, which alone could bring in up to £300,000 per year.
More importantly, it highlights how we identify and recognise underlying investment value in assets beyond yield returns that others simply overlook.
At a time when the future of office space is uncertain in the post-COVID landscape, we still see strength in properties with the right fundamentals, where context, market sentiment and long-term potential align.
The St Magnus House deal perfectly captures our outlook: confident when markets waver, analytical when uncertainty clouds others’ judgment, and creative when most rely on rigid assumptions.
We believe it’s a property with strong fundamentals today, and a compelling role to play in the future of Aberdeen city centre.
