CBRE has successfully advised Shelter, the UK’s leading housing and homelessness charity, on the acquisition of a new flagship store in Hampstead. The shop will be one of the largest in its London portfolio and forms part of Shelter’s wider retail expansion strategy.

As part of CBRE’s pro bono programme, the retail team has advised the charity on the optimisation of its portfolio of shops, which has helped turnaround the charity’s retail success by highlighting potential areas for further expansion. The existing portfolio was highly diverse, with locations ranging from affluent London suburbs to city fringe high streets and rural towns. CBRE used specialist retail expertise from teams across the business to produce a detailed analysis of the current portfolio and were able to identify a number of high performing locations where the rent to sales ratio was optimal. Using specialist agents on the ground, CBRE was able to pinpoint affordable locations for Shelter’s expansion culminating in the opening of the Hampstead store – the first ever ‘fee free’ acquisition of its kind.

In addition to the Hampstead store, CBRE also successfully advised Shelter on the repossession of a Services Hub by a large, mixed-use developer. CBRE worked to protect Shelter’s position and explore a range of options, eventually obtaining a larger settlement than was originally offered by identifying and securing marriage value.

Earlier this year, CBRE announced an extension of the national charity partnership with Shelter until 2018, making it the most ambitious charity partnership CBRE has ever undertaken in the UK. Originally launched in February 2015 as part of its ‘building a better future’ responsible business plan, pro bono work has been a particularly successful aspect of the affiliation and is an area CBRE plans to build upon over the remaining period of the partnership.