Business Solutions

Cushman & Wakefield - commercial real estate in the UK

Occupier Services

Finance

Maximising value for our clients through funding, valuation and rating.

Funding

We have a dedicated team of professionals made up of Investment Bankers, Chartered Surveyors, Accountants and Financial Analysts providing a complete debt, mezzanine, equity raising and advisory service. Core activities on our debt advisory service includes raising senior debt and mezzanine throughout the UK and Western Europe. We can also advise occupiers on raising finance secured against their real estate.

Valuation

As part of a 136-strong pan-European team our 40 UK valuers focus on the commercial sector. We have a strong occupier track record in offices, logistics/warehousing, retail warehousing, shopping centres and high street retail. We also specialise in residential, hospitality and in valuing self-storage properties where we have taken the lead in this expanding market.

Unlike many of our competitors, our valuations are not solely based on historic comparables, but reflect up to date market evidence and sentiment derived from our extensive agency coverage.

Rating

Cushman & Wakefield has joined forces with Gerald Eve, the UK’s leading business rates adviser to offer our occupier clients the full spectrum of rating services, including rates appeals, bill payment, empty property rates mitigation and historic audits. Gerald Eve operates through a network of nine offices across the UK with over 50 rating surveyors.

Appeals

A general rating revaluation took effect on 1 April 2010 when all commercial and other non-domestic properties received new rates assessments – leading to significant changes in rates liabilities for many properties. The 2010 assessments show that average rateable values increased by around 20% in comparison with the 2005 revaluation.

This should have led to proportionate reductions in the Uniform Business Rates (UBR), but they have reduced by only 15%. This is because in setting the UBR (the multiplier that is applied to the rateable value to calculate the rates due) the Government and the Welsh Assembly have factored an assumed ‘loss on appeals’ – in other words they are expecting successful challenges against the new valuations.

Gerald Eve’s successful track record of challenging clients rates assessments is based on its specialist surveyors’ experience working across the full spectrum of business sectors including education, healthcare, industrial, leisure, public sector, retail, transport, telecommunications and utilities.

Bill Payment

All organisations face the regular task of auditing, paying and recording the payment of every business rates demand they receive. There is no universal procedure for doing this and as a result, many do not do it well and overpayments are commonplace. Business Improvement District levies and the introduction of local Business Rate Supplements in April 2010 have added further management and budgeting problems to the process.

Gerald Eve’s Rates Payment Management Service manages the entire rates payment process, including auditing bills, managing payments and proactively recovering refunds – a bespoke rating software package speeds up refunds, enhances cash flow and supplies tailored financial reports to suit clients' needs.

Empty Property Rates Mitigation

The commercial property sector faced a rude awakening in April 2008, when new empty property rates legislation came into effect in England and Wales. Owners, occupiers, developers and landlords now face additional costs for any vacant properties.

Rating law is complex and the new rules for empty property rates created some previously untested opportunities. Gerald Eve has successfully challenged the Valuation Office and local authorities and achieved excellent results on behalf of clients. Tactics available to companies who seek to avoid new empty property rates tax include the following:

• Intermittent occupation
• Charitable occupation
• Occupation prohibited by law
• Incomplete build or refurbishment
• Properties not capable of beneficial occupation

Historic Rates Audit

This service offers companies the opportunity to have their past rates payments audited for inaccuracies. Rates calculations are complex and a forensic audit of historic liabilities can unearth billing and payment errors.

Key features include:

• transitional arrangements: checking different schemes for each country and each revaluation
• interest on refunds of overpaid rates
• rateable value alterations
• transitional certificates
• reliefs including empty property rates relief

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