Custodian Property Income REIT (LSE: CREI), which seeks to deliver an enhanced income return by investing in a diversified portfolio of smaller, regional properties with strong income characteristics across the UK, today provides a trading update for the third quarter ended 31 December 2025 (“Q3” or the “Quarter”).
Commenting on the trading update, Richard Shepherd-Cross, Managing Director of the Investment Manager, said: “During the Quarter we continued to drive occupancy and rental growth through strong leasing activity across our portfolio, underlining the strength of occupier demand for our properties, despite market headwinds. In addition to supporting growth in EPRA earnings per share, our asset management activities also led to a further increase in the portfolio ERV on a like-for-like basis and we now have around 14% of additional income growth already embedded when compared to current rents, which we will continue to unlock as lease events occur.
“During the Quarter we issued the final tranche of shares in consideration for the Merlin portfolio. This corporate acquisition has given us a strong blueprint that we will continue to pursue. It has the double benefit of providing a solution to family offices when succession planning and / or seeking to simplify the structure of their property holdings, while allowing us to achieve our own ambitions for growth in an environment when issuing new equity for cash remains challenging. It has resulted in a number of enquiries from similar potential vendors, with whom we have entered initial discussions.
“2025 proved to be a challenging year for UK listed and direct real estate, with almost half the year ‘on hold’ as the country awaited the outcome of the November 2025 Budget, despite a promising start. However, we are seeing the market begin to react to some of the underlying positive metrics in the early weeks of 2026, which combined with the easing of longer-term gilt rates and stable property valuations over the last year seem to have started to shift the mindset of investors about the solid prospects for commercial property. This has been particularly notable amongst retail investors where we saw a notable uptick in investment into the Company through share trading platforms. This has been no doubt helped by the fact that following recent listed market consolidation these investors have fewer ways to invest in commercial property and is in line with our goal of being the REIT of choice for investors seeking high and stable dividends from well-diversified UK real estate.”
You can read the full update here.
