West Ham accounts will reveal in the next few weeks that the Boleyn Ground and land were sold by the club for £38m and ClaretandHugh has learned the highest bid was from Gallaird with the second best coming in some way behind at £32m.
Gallaird later sold the stadium and land to Barratt London at a minimal profit after they lost interest in the development.
A senior club insider told us: “The site was offered to the entire market, the highest bid by a long way was £38m. The property market has gone on a decent amount since we sold though, so any profits by the developer will be higher than anticipated as a result. It could have gone the other way, even now the properties are not sold at the prices they are asking.”
This week Barrett London revealed that a one bedroom apartment at Upton Gardens will have a guide price of £360,000 while a three bedroom flat will have price guide of £560,000.
Twenty five per cent of the 842 home development on the site in Green street will be reserved for affordable rent and shared ownership and Newham council have stated that will invest around £18m for 10% of the development valuing the 25% social housing around £45m in total to the developer.
The remaining 631 apartments are likely to average around £400,000 per home given the prices announced bringing the developer an extra £252m in house sales.
With demolition and clearing of the Boleyn ground estimated to be around £8m, planning fees, project costs, bank interest and section 106 costs around £20m and build costs of £84m the developer will have laid out around £150m when all is said and done when the £38m cost of the land is factored in.
However if Barratt London manage to sell the properties at the guide prices they could pull in nearly £300m to double their money and make a handsome £150m profit.
Our senior club insider told us “The club didn’t have the money to do the development itself. It cost £21m to move to the London Stadium (£15m lease, £6m on shop, offices, making the stadium have the look and feel of West Ham United etc), had we developed it and property prices fallen it could have brought the club down.
“The club itself simply didn’t have the money to do the development itself and we are a football club, not property developers !
Developers usually hope to make 15/20% of their costs, but in a rising market like this one it can be a lot more. They also still have to sell the properties at the asking prices !”
It always surprised me that Sullivan personally didn’t simply top the best offer and take the project forward via his property company. I always thought £38M was on the low side although it was and still is a risky location. I never thought they’d manage to get 850 units on the site.
He probably new if he did that he would get a lot of flak in the press. It was a smart move selling it off.
You are spot you, DS did consider it as he thought £38m was quite low but thought he couldn’t win. If the market went up and it made money he would be accused of profiting from West Ham from buying the land on the cheap and if the market went down he would be accuse of being a mug in the property world by losing money. He couldn’t win either way. It looks like Barratt London will profit but they still need to sell these flats at the guide prices and they have gambled £150m.
Gallaird pulled out last June, they had already paid £13m down payment but when they received a notice to compel the deal for the remaining £25m in June 2016 they quickly sold the land to Barratt London a few few thousand more then they bought it for.
You can’t get a a cheap one bed flat for £138,000 in Green street so it remains to be seen whether people will pay £360,000 which works out £650 per square foot