Seeking out opportunities in distressed assets

As distressed situations rise, recovery experts say Covid-19 has convinced them that online auctions have a vital role to play in reaching investors who are keen to create value. Julia Cahill reports

“There are a lot of people just waiting to see how things play out… There’s all kinds of pain to come but there will be opportunities for people to get hold of assets and make them work,” says Nick Myers, partner in restructuring and recovery at accountant Smith & Williamson.

Distress has historically filtered through to the auction room as one route through which creditors look for an exit when there are property assets in play, and this was the focus of the final podcast in our EG Future of Auctions series.

Ollie Childs, head of commercial auctions at online auction house BidX1, has recently handled the distressed sales of a retail park and two shopping centres and he expects to see more activity around retail stock in H1 next year as well as around buy-to-let properties and smaller development sites.

Childs says there is a strong market of investors willing to buy value-add opportunities.