The latest major retail acquisition by the increasingly confident local Northern investors is the Northcott Shopping Centre in Glengormley, just north of Belfast. It is understood the investor beat off institutional bidders and paid £10.35 million sterling for the centre, which was the first large shopping centre to be developed in the North. The sale price suggests a yield of about six per cent. McCombe Pierce acted for the vendor, a local property group, and Lambert Smith Hampton acted for the purchaser.

Northcott has a retail area of 130,000 sq ft, with Tesco as anchor tenant. There is planning permission for a 40,000 sq ft extension with 18 retail units.

This is the third major shopping centre sale in the North this year. In February, the Flagship centre in Bangor sold for £14.8 million, suggesting a yield of 7.9 per cent, while the Richmond Centre, Derry, sold for £22 million (an initial yield of 7.66 per cent) at the start of the summer.

Keith Shiells, of Lambert Smith Hampton, commented that the recent planning problems with out-of-town retail developments had underpinned the value of both town centre developments and established out-of-town centres.