Phone home: Victorian water tower in south London for sale. Comes with excellent mobile phone reception
The entire site is on the market for £1.25million as a mixed-use investment, with the top two floors leased out to two telecoms companies taking advantage of the tall building for their mobile phone masts.
There are two flats in the Victorian tower, one studio with a mezzanine-level bedroom, and a one-bedroom flat with a basement, which the tenant currently uses as a music studio.
Five further flats are in the new building, which is also the access point for the upper storeys of the tower, via the connecting bridge.
Four of the flats were sold on long leases while three are held on assured shorthold tenancies and the building generates a total income of £71,000 per year, including £31,500 from the telecoms rental.
“This is a rarely available type of mixed use investment,” said Richard Pillow, director at SHW who are marketing the property.
“I haven’t ever sold or worked on anything quite like this before. A water tower conversion is not something that comes up every day and telecom-related sales are also uncommon.”
The yellow brick building also features red brick decoration, a moulded stone plinth and a huge green-painted cast iron water tank. It also originally had a 120-ft well, from which water was drawn to supply the laundry and local houses, as well as St Olave's Union.
Most of St Olave’s Union has since been demolished and the water tower was bought by a new owner, who converted the by now dilapidated building into a one-bedroom maisonette with office and plant rooms above. They also added a new-build block of five flats connected to the tower by a bridge.
FINANCING WILL BE COMPLEX
Within the water tower complex there are three different types of property, Russell Summers, mortgage sales manager, Trussle explains.
The telecoms business is commercial, there are four residential long lease flats, and there are three flats on assured short-term tenancies, which are classed as buy-to-let.
This means there is a mixture of regulated and non-regulated mortgages required on the property.
Residential borrowing is fully regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, buy-to-let and commercial borrowing is not.
This means that if something goes wrong with a non-regulated mortgage, the borrower doesn’t have recourse to the financial ombudsman.
Summers advises any potential buyer to visit a commercial mortgage broker in the first instance.
He also points out that any lending will probably be on commercial rates and is likely to be on bespoke terms – so will be more expensive than regular high street mortgage rates.
If a buyer owns existing property worth £1.25 million or more, a cheaper and simpler option would be to remortgage the other property and buy with cash.