Sale and leaseback halves volumes and focuses on retail to camping

Plants, warehouses and now more and more discount stores, hypermarkets and holiday resorts. The financial transaction in which a company sells its premises or production plant to a leasing company, obtaining immediate liquidity, but remaining on lease (in English, sale & leaseback) reduces volumes, but diversifies. Not only industrial plants. In one out of three cases, also large-scale retail. A week ago, Club del Sole closed its firstsale & leasebacktransaction of 5 villages and more than 2,800 residential units, without impacting operations, involving Swiss Life Asset Managers France.

According to the Corporate Capital Report H1 by Colliers, in the first half of 2025, the volume of sale & leaseback transactions in Europe increased slightly by 5% compared to the high second half of 2024, approaching 2 billion. More are expected in the second half of the year, to reach at least 4 billion for the whole of 2025. This is a far cry from the 8 billion in 2022 and as much in 2021 (a total of 16 billion in two years) which, in the post-covid phase, had elevated a niche phenomenon to one of the most interesting forms of alternative financing. Industrial assets continued to dominate the market, accounting for 66% of all transactions in H1 2025, followed by retail assets (29% of the total). In geographical terms, the UK contributed 27% of total transaction volume. Behind, Poland, Italia, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.

"Against a backdrop of persistent pressure on profit margins and balance sheets, with the erosion of purchasing power and competition from discounters, large retailers need to keep costs under control, optimise portfolios and invest in Esg, omnichannel and digital," explained Chris Nichols and Lydia Brissy, analyst and director Europe research respectively at Savills. We estimate that M&A and sale & leaseback in 2026 will support higher investment volumes and opportunities for investors".

"Highly specialised production facilities, as well as logistics companies and large-scale retail chains with essential supply chains, represent very attractive assets for sale & leaseback transactions," explained Chelsea Mandel, founder of Ascension Advisory. "The investment is particularly advantageous for real estate investors because the leases are structured as 'triple-net', i.e. the tenant pays taxes, insurance and maintenance costs. Therefore, the contracts guarantee a passive income stream for the investor. For companies, this translates into more liquidity and financing at an attractive cost of capital. In the first two months of this year we concluded several sale & leaseback transactions in Europe, both in the Czech Republic and Germany,' Mandel concluded, 'and we expect the second half of the year to be even busier.

"In Italia," explained Silvia Gandellini, head of capital markets Italy at Cbre, "the phenomenon is growing in grocery and bricolage mainly. And since bank financing does not cover 100 per cent of an acquisition, for a retailer S&LB is an opportunity to plan development and can secure liquidity not only by selling its existing assets but also by securing future development by being able to buy land for new openings. In this way, retailers can count on ambitious development plans, accelerating growth and brand awareness considerably. Typically, it takes investments on portfolios above 100 million to have an impact on the business. There are many examples in recent years of sales of Italian and European property portfolios by large retail operators.
In January 2025, Coop Alleanza 3.0 sold 140,000 sqm of assets to ICG for 222 million and a 30-year lease. In September, Leroy Merlin Italia sold 11 assets to LeadCrest Capital Partners for EUR 122m.