The full impact of the recession continued to hamper transactional activity and reduce average property values across the UK hotel, pub, restaurant, leisure, care and retail sectors during 2009, according to Christie + Co’s Business Outlook 2010 publication.

The full impact of the recession continued to hamper transactional activity and reduce average property values across the UK hotel, pub, restaurant, leisure, care and retail sectors during 2009, according to Christie + Co’s Business Outlook 2010 publication.

The report shows that values in the hotel sector fell by 19.5% during 2009, whilst the pub and restaurant sectors witnessed declines of 20.1% and 18.1% respectively. The care sector reported a fall in values of 11%, whilst the retail sector experienced a reduction of 9.8% in average values.

For the first time, the publication also reported the movement in average property values from the peak of each respective market. Hotel values have dropped around 34% since the hotel market’s peak in Q3 2007, whilst pub values fell around 29% from the pub market’s Q4 peak in the same year. Restaurant values, which peaked in Q1 2008, fell 30%, with care sector values falling around 26% since the market’s peak in Q3 2007. Finally, retail values saw a 16% fall after its market peaked in Q2 2007.

Despite the decline in transaction volume, there were encouraging signs of increased activity across all of Christie + Co’s specialist sectors during 2009 compared to the previous 12 months. David Rugg, Chairman of Christie + Co, said: ´The volume of single asset transactions was reasonably steady and frequent across all our 15 UK offices, although funding and due diligence issues lengthened the process. Well priced businesses - from corporate disposal programmes in particular - were keenly sought-after.'

Distressed cases, which accounted for a large percentage of transactional activity during 2009, will continue to be brought to the market as trading conditions remain challenging and banks shake out further problem cases. Christie + Co’s Bank Support and Business Recovery team worked with a growing list of clients during the year, assisting in more than 350 distress cases, involving over 1,600 assets.