Massive Putney pub for auction at £2.5m

A public auction in London next month sees the completion of another innovative property deal by Massive Pub Company, the multiple leasehold group led by Peter Linacre.

The freehold of the Telegraph in Putney, south-west London, will be sold with a guide price of £2.45m, with Massive as a sitting tenant paying a £160,000-per-annum rent.

Massive, which signed a 35-year lease on the former Spirit pub a year ago, has completed four other similar deals in recent years.

The company identifies a quality freehold property it wants to run on a tenancy basis and a freehold buyer.

The unnamed buyer in the case of the Telegraph has made a contribution of several hundred thousand pounds to the refurbishment costs of the venue, which Massive plans to open shortly. Linacre said: "It's a big, big site - a magnificent site. It's a good deal for the investor and a good deal for us."

Massive, which runs leasehold pubs within the M25 corridor, has seen rapid expansion in the past year after taking on a number of former Spirit pubs acquired by Robert Tchenguiz's Globe Pub Company which have been leased to operators by S&NPE.

Originally, Massive was trading 25 of these sites but handed back 13 of them at the start of this year. The remaining dozen venues are seeing good sales increases under Massive stewardship, with one pub, the Colliers Tup in Colliers Wood, south London, hitting weekly sales of £18,000 compared to £4,000 a year ago.

The 13 returned Globe pubs, mostly in north-west London, have been largely let to Asian operators catering for the Asian pub market. The auction of the Telegraph takes place at a Jones Lang LaSalle auction on 6 July.