John Truslove teams up with Asper Property Group to secure £1.875 million acquisition

By Peter Davison

8 August 2023

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Charlie London and Ben Truslove

Asper Property Group has purchased Earlswood Trading Estate, near Solihull, for £1.875 million in a deal brokered by property agents John Truslove – the second million pound deal announced by the Redditch-based agents in a week.

The estate was purchased from the Shephard family which has owned Earlswood Trading Estate for around 100 years.

The multi-let estate totalling 46,000 sq ft will now undergo a staged £350,000 refurbishment and upgrading programme and is being relaunched as Earlswood Business Park.

Asper Property Group is the investment vehicle of Hagley-based developer Charlie London, and the 17 units on the 3.5 acre site include office and industrial space.

As well as refurbishing two units to meet the latest Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) requirements to achieve an EPC of Band E or better, Asper will now create two more offices.

A planning application will shortly be submitted for three new industrial units extending to circa 7,250 sq ft in total.

Ben Truslove, joint managing director of John Truslove, said: “We have acted for the Shephard family for more than 40 years, advising them on their property interests.
“This was another off-market sale secured through a combination of market knowledge, contacts and reputation and maximising our in-house database of interested investors.

“We knew that Charlie London was looking for potential investments in the commercial and industrial sector and when the Shephard family decided to sell Earlswood Trading Estate for the first time in over 100 years, we were able to bring both parties together swiftly to their mutual benefit.”

Charlie London, managing director of Asper Property Group, said: “This was a complex negotiation on a property that has not been traded for over 100 years. Ben Truslove brought us the opportunity in September 2022, and we agreed to proceed with the purchase in November.

“As well as developing two new offices, we will be substantially enhancing the value of Earlswood Business Park through a programme of refurbishment and, subject to planning permission, the construction of three new industrial units.”

The new office and industrial space will be jointly marketed by John Truslove and Birmingham and Black Country agents Siddall Jones.

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The park is currently home to long standing tenants such as Laranca Engineering, which runs Laranca Motorsport, the leading historic race car preparation team with a winning record in BMW touring cars and single seaters from the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

RMFX supplies prosthetic masks for TV and film productions such as Gangs of London and Emmerdale, and MJ Coles Construction Services is an established commercial building and construction contractor.

Kareem Baig of Newhall Solicitors in Birmingham acted for Asper Property Group and the Shephard family was advised by Lisa Johnson of Bradley Haynes Law in Worcester.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.