Good afternoon, Lily. Thank you for the introduction, and good morning, everybody, or good afternoon rather, everybody, and welcome to an overview of Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust. For those of you that have been on before, I'm Nick Montgomery. I'm a Fund Manager alongside Bradley Biggins, who's with me today as well. This will probably be a slightly shorter initial presentation than over recent times, because obviously we're following a quarterly NAV update. There's obviously a lot going on, both in terms of geopolitics , but the impact on markets. Also, in our case, obviously, activity in relation to a possible M&A activity, and then, hence, I expect we will have some questions about that more broadly.
I guess we will aim to give you an overview to the extent that we can in relation to that, and in particular, set it in the context of our broader strategy. If we just start, I guess, by recapping on what we are for those perhaps that don't know us quite so well. We are a real estate investment trust. We own a good quality portfolio with a value as at December of around GBP 480 million. We have an attractive income yield, which allows us, in turn, to pay an attractive level of dividends. Our most recent dividend yield into today's share price reflects a dividend yield of around 7.3%, so an attractive level of dividend.
Importantly, we have delivered growth in that dividend, and as we go through the presentation, you will hopefully see where we will continue to deliver further income growth, and then, in turn, earnings, and down the line, further dividend growth. The yield profile of the portfolio is very attractive, both in relation to the initial yield that the portfolio delivers, but also what we call the reversionary yield, which is our independent valuer's view of market rents as a percentage of our portfolio value, which today represents a yield of around 8.3%. To put that, I guess, more into hard numbers, that's the potential to deliver additional rent from the portfolio of around GBP 9 million, which compares to the annualized dividend yield that we're paying of around GBP 17.5 million.
Although you never get all of that, because obviously there's churn in the portfolio, that's higher than peers, and we hope will allow us, as I say, to continue driving the earnings growth. That's why you and obviously we own the company because it delivers that attractive yield. We have a very robust balance sheet, and I'll come on to give a perspective on the market. Of course, in an environment where the expectation is that inflation will inevitably remain stickier, and therefore we might see interest rates higher than we had expected maybe a month or two ago, we have a very robust balance sheet with one of the lowest cost, longest duration fixed rates across the whole of the real estate sector. We have an average interest cost today of about 3.4%, and that's all in, which has an average maturity around 7.7 years.
Now, more importantly, of that, around three-quarters is actually fixed at 2.5% for just over another 10 years. Now, given obviously market volatility, not least over the course of the last few weeks, our share price reflects a discount to the December NAV of around 20%, which again, we think offers an attractive entry point given what you'll hear from us in terms of further earnings growth potential. We are continuing to address our overarching strategy, progressing that thematic approach on improving the underlying sustainability performance of our assets, which is all about driving that higher rent through the green premium and delivering a more resilient portfolio over the longer term.
Just to recap, again, for those that don't know us quite so well, over the course of the last five years, we've been very clear in terms of where we want to be allocated, with around 2/3 of our portfolio now allocated to the multi-let industrial sector or the retail warehouse sector, which again, not just our view, but consensus is that that ought to be the part of the market that delivers the most attractive risk-adjusted returns. Excuse me. Now, obviously, just pausing for a moment and going to some of the questions I can see on the right-hand side of my screen.
Since we last presented on this forum, we have made an announcement that if you haven't seen it features on our website, in relation to a consortium bid proposal for Picton on behalf of SREIT in a consortium with LondonMetric Property, which again, I imagine most of you will know well, obviously, a large Real Estate Investment Trust, who also happens to be a shareholder in SREIT. Obviously, we are very restricted in terms of what we can say. All we can say is what was in the leak announcements, which in simple terms, was a consortium offer for Picton with LondonMetric Property; the fact that , in early March , we made a joint non-binding proposal to acquire the company. That proposal was an all-share, so a paper bid, so no cash, an acquisition funded by the issuance of separate SREIT and LondonMetric shares.
In simple terms, we were highlighting that would allow Picton shareholders to realize an accelerated return, and obviously, they're able to roll into what we genuinely believe are our market-leading REITs. Obviously, we are different to LondonMetric. We are much smaller, and we have a different income profile, and I think we appeal to a different type of shareholder base. As I say, we think both, in our view, are leading. Now, that's the extent of what we can say in relation to the current process. What we have done, though, in the presentation, in an attempt to give you a little bit more color on how we look at M&A, is just to restate, and Bradley will talk to this, some of the overarching principles that we would apply, and obviously , importantly, our Board would apply in looking at growth for the company.
Obviously, the key focus for us is anything that we do would obviously need to be accretive in terms of earnings, whilst also obviously preserving our conviction views about the real estate market, in particular, having that complementary portfolio where, as I say, we have taken the portfolio to where we're around 2/3 is allocated to multi-let industrial and retail warehousing. More on that in due course. We obviously wanted to highlight that now and to say that we will address that a little bit more further in the presentation. The other point to note at this stage, and again, there's no content in the deck, for similar reasons, is that some of you will have seen that Schroders, following a 200-year history, is being acquired by Nuveen. Now, that transaction was announced a few weeks ago or a couple of months ago.
The actual vote on the transaction is at the end of this month. All being well, subject to antitrust and other regulatory approvals, the transaction will close later in the year. Now, we're all very excited by that. Nuveen, for those that don't know, is part of an American organization called TIAA, a very large insurance business in the U.S., essentially a mutual, looking at it from a U.K. perspective. Nuveen is their profit-making asset management business, which is deploying both for the general account, the balance sheet of TIAA, but also investors within those underlying Nuveen funds. Putting those two businesses together creates a business that has assets under management of around two and a half trillion U.S., and it provides our clients across the whole Schroders business, combined with Nuveen, with access to a much broader range of geographies and products.
Now, obviously relevant to this, what does that mean for real estate? It is very exciting. Nuveen run a similar quantum of assets that we do in Europe, but actually is very complementary, both in terms of country, sector, strategies, and investors. Interestingly, in Europe, but also particularly in the U.K., they don't run real estate investment trusts like we do. We believe that this will remain a strategic focus for the combined going forward, and as we've always said in these forums, although this isn't our biggest strategy, it is certainly one of the most visible, with it being in the shop window as a listed fund. Strategically very important that no one is distracted by the Nuveen transaction, that we continue executing to deliver the best thing for our shareholders.
In time, I genuinely believe the transaction will offer all of our investors, including SREIT's, further really interesting opportunities, both in terms of resource, reach, scale, and on all the things that those bring in terms of, critically, performance. Now, just moving on to the next slide. I guess the first thing to note, and we did obviously announce our interim results in November, but we gave a further update in Q1 with some really exciting asset management activity. Obviously, the key focus for us is driving higher earnings growth. That's obviously partly about reducing the vacancy rate, but it's also about making sure that where we have vacancy, we're delivering those improvements in terms of refurbishments, improving the sustainability performance, driving higher rents.
We're making good progress, and Bradley will provide more color on where we are in relation to the vacancy rate and where we see that moving directionally. As I say, we are encouraged by the activity, notwithstanding, obviously, the broader geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Part of the reason for that, I guess, not say confidence as such, but because we can see what's happening on the ground, is that we have an overweight exposure to those more undersupplied, we would argue, structurally supported parts of the real estate markets, particularly the multi-let industrial estates that no one is really building, in contrast to the bigger boxes where we have seen more supply, but also the more value-oriented end of the retail sector.
That's obviously retail warehousing, but also convenience retail, and Bradley will talk to some of the recent activity with tenants like Lidl and Tesco and others, who are taking space from us in those sorts of retail assets. Our performance continues to be strong. We won, for the second time, the best 10-year risk-adjusted performance for 2024, awarded by MSCI the middle of last year, and we are seeing that relative performance continue over the more recent period. There's this continued focus, as we've said previously, best-in-class governance. Obviously, we changed fees relatively recently, moving 50% of our fees onto a market cap basis, and the fees include, as Bradley will touch on, a natural tiering so that as the company gets bigger, the overall fee level in basis points comes down. Continued healthy activity levels.
That in turn contributed to a further positive NAV total return over the most recent quarter to December, which we're setting out here. You can see there, the NAV at the bottom of GBP 0.617 per share. That reflects the 20% discount based on today's share price of around GBP 0.50. You can see we have continued to invest capital expenditure in our assets, and that will be a further theme as we run up to the final year-end results to March, which we'll be presenting in June. Again, both at property level, but also NAV level, continued healthy performance against our peers because of that underlying activity.
Obviously, as I noted at the introduction, the reason we own the shares is largely driven by income, particularly if we're in an environment where rates are going to remain high for longer, which we've been saying for a little while, even obviously before the most recent turbulence in the Middle East. Therefore, that really strong focus on driving the asset management activity, the underlying asset performance, really disciplined cost control, close management of all fees, including our own, has allowed us to continue driving that growth in EPRA earnings, which you can see there, ticked up slightly over the quarter by 2%. As I noted in the introduction, but I think this is even more important today, when we're looking at the outlook for earnings and dividends, obviously, we're looking at top-line growth in terms of rental growth.
We're looking at the ability to save costs and drive efficiencies, which obviously would come through scale. Also, most importantly, we have the reassurance of knowing that we have very cheap debt for a very long period of time. Some of our peers that you'll know, some of them are producing higher earnings, some of them are, in fact, distributing more than their recurring earnings. In some cases, those companies know that they have a bit of a cliff edge coming in terms of debt cost, because they need to refinance in 2026 or 2027. Of course, rates today remain substantially above where they were when some of those facilities were put in place five to seven years ago, and we don't have that issue here. You can see on the left-hand side here, the vast majority of our debt, GBP 130 million , with Canada Life.
That's the piece that is fixed at 2.5% for an average maturity of around 10 years. The balance of our debt, it's more of a tactical facility we have with RBS, part of which is hedged, part of which is floating. Again, that's a relatively small part. When you aggregate that, we have that average debt cost of around 3.4%. Performance, I've noted, it remains strong relative to our peers. Obviously, in capital value terms, we have seen the market slow. You can see here, if you just look at the bottom right-hand side there, over the long term, we've continued to deliver very healthy levels of relative outperformance. That's obviously down to the sector allocation that I've been mentioning, particularly the outperformance of the multi-industrial sector.
It's also by having that higher income return through the cycle, and obviously, the asset management allows us to drive the rental growth as well. Now, just from a market perspective, obviously, things are moving around on a daily, hourly basis. What we've seen, as you can expect, is therefore a sharp change in the trajectory of interest rates. Again, the outlook remains uncertain even today. Obviously, the markets have had a slightly better day. Our view is that this has, if you like, concentrated the views that we shared before the most recent turbulence in the Middle East, which is that the inflationary pressures that were beginning to abate, in our view, in Schroders' view, were still going to remain elevated versus consensus.
Prior to the recent, obviously, impact on energy prices, that was down to a host of factors, demographics, decarbonization, supply chains, the supply chain disruption, and obviously, the energy price increases will add to that. What that means is that we're not expecting any reduction in rates this year. Those interest rate reductions will be pushed out, and that's what you're seeing in terms of market expectations here. I guess, from a real estate point of view, if we do see, let's all hope, a relatively swift end to hostilities, and that remains uncertain, we think central banks will look through, obviously, the inflationary impact. As I say, rates remain slightly higher than previously.
We will also see the knock-on impact of second-order effects in terms of impact on raw materials, which sits obviously alongside what we've already seen in terms of increasing demand for scarce resources, skilled labor shortages, which mean that the supply-constrained pipeline in new developments across Europe, but particularly focused on the U.K., will become even more acute. When we're looking forward into the cycle, if I just to move to the next slide, we expect the returns going forward to be driven by rental growth rather than any sort of benefit coming from yield compression in response to what others perhaps would have expected in terms of falling yields.
In that context, our strategy of owning a high-yielding portfolio allocated to those sectors where we are seeing those higher rates of rental growth, obviously, particularly in that multi-let industrial sector, means that we do see the potential for a recovery looking forward driven by that restricted supply, but portfolios like ours benefiting more than the average because of our allocation and because of that high yield. As I say, lots of uncertainty, but we think we are relatively well-positioned. With that, I will pause and hand over to Bradley to speak a little bit more about strategy. Bradley.
Great. Thanks very much, Nick, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join. We have got some good portfolio activity to talk about, but first, as Nick alluded to, we could just discuss the Board's and the Manager's approach to corporate acquisition or M&As, as it's often called, and just to give you some general comments on our approach, and, I guess, the first thing to say, is that there is a high bar for us to participate in M&A. And that the key focus, as Nick said, for both the Board and the Manager, is what is best for shareholders in a given situation. And the Board are independent of the Manager. They're there to represent shareholders, and in my opinion, I think they do an excellent job of that.
Now, for the right acquisition opportunity from a corporate perspective, the Manager, Schroders, so us, we would be willing to invest in SREIT to support the right corporate acquisition opportunity. That corporate acquisition opportunity must satisfy a number of general requirements. First and foremost, it has to be earnings and dividend accretive for SREIT shareholders. Now, how can you achieve that? Well, often there are clear cost synergies, or there could be asset management opportunities that our teams can unlock. There could be asset recycling opportunities, so perhaps selling lower-yielding assets where we don't see a rental growth path, and then buying higher-yielding assets where we think we can grow the rents as well. Also, there's the opportunity in some situations to add leverage up to our 35% sort of top-end range guidance on net LTV if we can do that in an accretive way.
The benefit of the acquisitions funded by the leverage more than outweighs the cost of that additional leverage. Now, of course, any corporate acquisition must also align with our sector preferences, and Nick outlined earlier the fact that we are 65% industrial and retail warehouse, with that industrial allocation being largely multi-let industrial estates. He's also outlined the favorable supply-demand dynamics we see there as to why we like those sectors. Now, of course, you're not going to typically get a perfectly matching sort of sector split, but we would like alignment. Of course, the assets we acquire have to be applicable to our strategy, so we look to improve the sustainability performance of our assets to generate higher income and capital growth.
As Nick has also alluded to, we did win the 10-year performance award from MSCI for the second year running, and it's important to us that we are able to continue that relative outperformance. Of course, one way of doing that is to have an attractive entry price. From our perspective, we don't want to overpay in a corporate acquisition scenario. They're the principles that we'll be judging any potential opportunities by. I hope that's helpful. Just to reiterate, it's absolutely key that any corporate acquisition is in the best interest of SREIT shareholders. With that element of strategy addressed, we'll move on to our real estate portfolio strategy. As I mentioned, sustainability is a core tenet of our strategy.
To be absolutely clear, that's only because we think it will help us deliver enhanced long-term total returns, and we consider that alongside the usual real estate fundamentals, such as thinking about structural changes on sector outlooks and occupier trends. As I said, Nick has outlined some of those factors we've been considering recently, so I won't repeat those. To give you an example of our strategy in action, and this is one you may have heard from us before, but it really is a fantastic proof of concept, and that's Stanley Green Trading Estate, which we acquired in December 2020. It had an existing trading estate there with a three-acre development site. We spent almost GBP 10 million developing 80,000 sq ft of new accommodation on that three-acre development site. That came in the form of 11 new units.
We made a conscious decision to spend more money on those units to develop them to be EPC A+ or BREEAM Excellent, which is a very good sustainability standard, particularly in industrial. Now, what we've found with those units, which are now fully let, is that we've been able to achieve much higher rents in those units compared to the older units on the estate, even though they're in literally exactly the same location. There's been a 39% premium for similar-sized units, and that is not all green premium, but we think a good element of that is green premium. Of course, tenants will be willing to pay more for a newer unit. We do believe a good element of that 39% rental premium is green premium.
Now, not only do you get higher rent, but you get more value per unit of rent that you're receiving, and that's because the independent valuer and the market in general, so other investors, would apply a keener yield to these more sustainable and efficient units than an older, unsustainable unit. Now, we're not stopping there at Stanley Green. We are undertaking a rolling refurbishment of the older estate, so we're bringing EPCs up to a B or higher. Because what you find on estates is when you achieve a higher rent in a certain part of the estate, those higher rents wash over the rest of the estate. As we've been refurbishing these assets, we have been achieving much higher rents on the existing estates.
For example, we achieved a 54% uplift in rent from Screwfix as a result of a refurbishment that we did with them on the existing estate. Overall, a really fantastic example, and just to really drive the point home, the question is, was it worthwhile spending that premium amount to get high-quality, sustainable units? We think emphatically yes, and that's drawn out by the investment performance, which you can see on the slide, where we've achieved significantly higher than the benchmark. Now, moving on to the progress we've made since we reported to the market last. We last reported our half-year results on the 27th of November. Since then, we've been very busy. We've done 18 lettings, and that's at a total rent of GBP 2.1 million. Nick spoke about the income profile of the fund.
We have a very high reversion yield of 8.3%, and the question we're often asked is, "Is that achievable?" Well, these new lettings, so the eight new lettings, were at a level that's 0.3% higher than the December ERV. Not only do we think that reversion yield is achievable, but we're achieving it with the deals we're doing right now. In addition, the rent reviews and renewals were significantly ahead of the previous passing level. More than 20% ahead of the previous passing level, so really good result there. That, again, speaks to us achieving that reversion. It speaks to the quality of the assets in the portfolio and the fact that we're positioned in areas where there's strong occupier demand in the market. We are continuing to progress sales, and we've made a number of sales through the financial year so far.
All of them, bar one, have been ahead of book value, and we did decide to sell one asset below book value because we felt that actually the price would only be under more pressure as time passed. We felt it was good to get out of that one. As Nick alluded to earlier as well, we are very much focused on cost control, so we have a very competitive ongoing charges ratio there of 1.27%, and we have aligned our fee with shareholders. The level of our fee is now more aligned with the experience of shareholders. Half of our fee is based on market cap. We hope that that's appreciated. Of course, our fee has therefore declined in the current environment, and I'm sure you will get the world's smallest violin out there for the Manager.
I wanted to touch on some asset management initiatives that we've got underway. We've got four examples across office, industrial, and retail warehouse. What's really important here is just the level of rental uplift we've been able to achieve in these processes. Also, it's worth just bearing in mind that the upside in our P&L is not really there yet because the leases have only recently completed, either at the end of the quarter or post -quarter-end, i.e., in 2026. There is lots of upside to come in the P&L from these initiatives. If we spin through them one by one, in the top left-hand corner, you can see some images of St. Anne's House, which is in Manchester. We're undertaking a GBP 3 million refurbishment there. That's almost complete. There's about GBP a million left to spend as of the 31st of December.
We're overhauling the basement, the ground floor, the common areas, and also the fifth -floor office. We're introducing end-of-journey facilities, so that's showers and cycle storage. We're adding a podcast studio, yoga studio, meeting rooms, breakout areas in the basement and ground floor. We're really activating that space, and we're adding an institutional spec reception. Now, that's all great, but we need to see some rental upside, and we are currently in the market with the fifth floor, and we're targeting a rent of GBP 28 per sq ft, which would be a 74% uplift on the previous passing level on that floor. You can see that the CapEx was very much justified. Now, in four years' time, we're targeting a total rent of GBP 1.5 million, which is almost double the current passing level, and that represents a forecast IRR of 13% per annum.
Again, it speaks to the accretive nature of these projects that we're undertaking to create value and drive rental growth. In the top right-hand corner, you can see some images of Millshaw Park Industrial Estate, which is in Leeds. This is a fantastic asset, and just taking a step back, I thought it would be helpful just to provide a brief bit of background on the asset. It's been a really strong performance since we acquired it 10 years ago in 2015. It's achieved just over 12% per annum total return compared to 9.6% for the MSCI All Industrial Benchmark. This asset is large. It's 28 acres, and there is 460,000 sq ft of warehouse space here. It's located just south of Leeds City Center, close to the M62 motorway, and it really is on the edge of the city.
Now, the Leeds industrial market has a very low vacancy rate, so it's around 3%. The national average is around 5.5%, so that's really helped us drive rents in recent years. Now, what I'm going to touch on here is specifically a unit we got back in June. It's 50,000 sq ft. We undertook a GBP 1.9 million refurbishment of that asset to bring the EPC up to an A from a C. We added PVs, EV charging, new roller shutter doors. We degassed the unit and put in modern electric HVAC systems, et cetera. Again, the question comes, well, was it worthwhile doing all that? Well, we have exchanged an agreement for lease with a padel operator, and they will be paying a rent that's 86% higher than the previous passing level. It's for 15 years straight.
There are CPI-linked rent reviews, and we are delighted with that. It's currently in planning. The landlord works are effectively complete. As soon as that planning process is complete, we will complete the lease, and then we will start to be able to accrue the rent in our financial statements. That just speaks to the point where I was making earlier, where we've spent the money, we've progressed these initiatives, but we haven't yet seen the rental upside in our financial statements. On the left-hand side of this slide, we show Headingley Central in Leeds. This is a mixed-use, 110,000 sq ft retail-led scheme. It's prominently located in the town center in Headingley, and it's anchored by core convenience retail and leisure operators such as Premier Inn Hotels, which is at one end. You've got The Gym Group at the other end.
In the middle, you've got the likes of Sainsbury's. Now I'm delighted to say we've also got Tesco's coming to the scheme, and we have McDonald's already open and operating in the scheme. It's those two tenants I'd like to discuss briefly here. We got some space back 18 months, 24 months ago from Wilkinson, who you might know went bust. They had a single unit, which was basically two units joined together. When we got the space back, we divided it back into two, so you've now got Unit 22 and Unit 24. We let one of the units to McDonald's, and they're paying a rent of GBP 75,000 per annum. It's a 25-year lease with a break at year 15, so a very long lease.
On a per sq ft basis, that GBP 75,000 per annum is a 28% increase compared to what Wilkinson were paying. Of course, McDonald's are a very strong tenant. We think that they're good for the rent for the long term. I'm delighted to say we've also exchanged an Agreement for Lease with Tesco, who are paying a rent of GBP 110,000 per sq ft, which is a 93% increase on the previous passing level on a per sq uare foot basis. That's also a 15-year lease with inflation in rent reviews. Again, this speaks to us creating value in our assets because it's very expensive to buy long leases with inflation in rent reviews from great tenants such as McDonald's and Tesco, but we're able to create them to generate value for our shareholders.
Now, on the right-hand side, the final example I'll touch on today is a retail warehouse scheme in Salisbury. It's called Churchill Way West. We own three units in a terrace that are next to a very large Waitrose store, which we don't own, but they're on the same retail park. In the past, the three units we owned were let to Smyths Toys, Homesense, and Sports Direct. We did a regear with Sports Direct to keep them at the scheme, and we ran the leases for Smyths and Homesense down to expiry because we were able to get permission to sell food from the units. What we were able to do was instigate a bidding war between Lidl and Aldi for this space. We always felt it would be great space for a discount food, convenience food operator.
It really suits their requirements well, being single level, large flat car park, and well-located in a good town. Now, what we're able to achieve with Lidl, who won the bid against Aldi, was a rent of GBP 440,000 per annum on a 25-year lease with a break at year 20, with inflation link rent reviews again. Importantly, that rent is 67% higher than what we were getting previously on a per sq ft basis. Now, we did have to spend GBP 1.5 million to improve the unit and Lidl's unit. They took Unit One, which we enlarged and improved the sustainability performance of. That EPC has moved to an A+. Previously, it was a D, so a really significant improvement. I think the numbers speak for themselves in terms of how profitable this has been. We've achieved an income return on cost at a double-digit level.
Now, there is still Unit Two. We've exchanged an agreement for lease with The Gym Group, again, for a 15-year term, and again, with inflation in rent reviews. Again, this speaks to us creating that value with these great leases to great tenants to create an overall much better asset that investors will place a higher value on. Now, The Gym Group AFL is subject to landlord works, which we are working on at the moment. When we finish those, the lease will complete, and again, we'll start to collect the rents from The Gym Group, again bearing in mind that this rental upside is not yet flowing through the P&L. Now moving on to an illustrative sort of overview of how we might achieve our reversionary rent.
Now, the first point to make is just take a step back and understand that our reversionary rent is GBP 9.1 million higher than our cash passing rent at the end of December. That's clearly material in the context of a GBP 17.5 million annualized dividend. We only need to achieve some of our reversion to hopefully have a really good impact on future dividends. Now, how are we going to achieve that higher rent? Well, we set out some illustrative steps here. First of all, in our current leases, we have fixed uplifts. That's usually the end of rent-free periods that tenants get at the start of a lease. In the next 12 months, to the end of this calendar year, we'll have GBP 3 million of fixed uplifts to come through. We also have GBP 900,000 of agreement for leases exchanged.
As I mentioned earlier, as certain requirements are met, such as achieving planning or completing landlord works, those leases will complete and we'll start to be able to accrue the rent into our P&L. Now, examples of those AFLs include the padel operator at Millshaw we discussed earlier, the Gym Group at Salisbury we also discussed earlier, and Tesco as examples. As those leases complete, we'll get more rent flowing. There are also some units and space in our portfolio where the market level of rent is above our current passing rent. As rent reviews come around, as we execute renewals, we will hopefully push those rents on. As I said earlier, our rent reviews and renewals since the interim results have been more than 20% higher than the previous passing level. Finally, we have vacant space, which is much reduced.
We're down to 9.7%, which is a good level for our portfolio. Really, we target 8%-9%, but 9.7% is very good. That's down some 200 basis points on the September level, and it is reflective of the fact that we did exchange those leases with The Gym Group, with Tesco's, with the padel operator. We've been working really hard to get the most from our space across the portfolio. Now with that, I'll pause, hand back to Nick, and we really encourage your questions, and be delighted to answer them.
Yeah. Thanks, Bradley. This obviously is essentially an interim update because we went into obviously lots of detail after the interims. We are obviously in the process of reviewing our year-end NAV, and we'll provide a lot more color on business as usual when we present the finals in June. I think putting to one side, I understand the focus of a lot of the questions. Hopefully, what comes across is business as usual is going well, notwithstanding broader market uncertainty, geopolitics. We're very focused on continuing to drive those higher earnings growth and in turn, high dividend growth and maximizing the value of the portfolio, as we improve the underlying assets with that sustainability-focused approach. Now, I guess just moving to the questions. I think there are obviously lots of questions in relation to the leak announcements.
We are, obviously, subject to the Market Abuse Regulation, and so there's a lot of detail that we're being asked for that we simply can't provide at the moment. The leak announcements, obviously, we didn't choose to make, and as we noted in the announcement, it is early days. When you have things like that, you also find that things are written in the press, which we're not in control of. We don't know where it comes from. I also understand how there might be information out there, which, as I say, people are reading and assuming is right, and as I say, all we've done is put out the leak announcements. What's great about this forum is that we get direct access to a really important part of our shareholder register.
That's why we're doing this now, because we wanted to have an opportunity, obviously, to give you an update on what's happening in relation to the underlying portfolio and the existing strategy, but also to be upfront and say, "Look, there's been this leak announcement," but in the absence of being able to provide any further detail, to reiterate some of those overarching principles that we in the Board are absolutely clear about when it comes to looking at potential future growth of the company. Again, we can't link this directly, obviously, to what we may or may not do in relation to Picton.
I would just encourage you to re-look, if you have an opportunity, at slide 12 in the deck, which does talk to some of those overarching principles that we're very clear about, complementary portfolio, earnings growth, and fundamentally, something that is in shareholders' interest, and speaking as a shareholder as well as the Manager, we are absolutely clear about that. What I propose we do, in relation to the questions relating to Picton, and again, the great thing about this forum is that we are able to go back to investors after the meeting and give responses to the extent that we can do. Don't view this as a sort of a dodge.
I think what's best is we take away the questions that relate to the leak announcements. Where we can, we provide responses to at least give you an indication of how we view this sort of activity as a matter of principle. That clearly dominates the questions, but we'll endeavor to get that response back to you through the forum by the end of the week. There are one or two questions that relate to activity more broadly. There's one just querying a sale that Bradley mentioned in Liverpool. It's our first one that we've done for a long time below book. I think that, in a sense, answers the question, which is, how much confidence can investors have in the estimated book value?
As you've heard from Bradley, and you've heard us report over recent years, as a general comment, we've consistently sold above book on completion of active managements. I think on this occasion, it is a bit of an exception simply because when we looked at what we believed we could deliver for asset management, we didn't have conviction that together with market uncertainty, we were going to be able to do enough to really drive the value. We had a buyer there who was prepared to move quite quickly, which is why we did the deal as we did. Bradley, there's one or two, I think, comments just in relation to vacancy, which I think you've covered, but is there any further points you just want to make in relation to the steps we're taking on the vacancy?
Yeah. There's a slide in the appendix that sets out the void position. I mentioned it's down to 9.7%, which is the longest it's been for a number of years, actually, for SREIT, and it reflects a lot of activity that we've undertaken, again, over a number of years. The reason the void was a bit higher was we did the Stanley Green development, which took a while to lease up, because with multi -industrial estates, you tend to build them speculatively, and tenants like to see them finished before they take a lease on the space. That took a while to let up, but it's fully let now, so that's a fantastic result. We've also had a number of pretty material refurbishments across our industrial estates, and we've achieved very high rental uplifts, which hopefully came across in the presentation.
There's an element of quality void, and we continue to work hard to bring the void down. I will say that our target void rate for this strategy will be around 8%-9%, and that's because we need the space back to undertake the refurbishments, to achieve rental uplifts, and to get better lease terms. In addition, one of the strengths of the portfolio is how granular and diversified it is, particularly given the high allocations multi-industrial estate, you might have 60 tenants on a single estate. What that means is there's general churn, so it's quite rare to be at 100% occupancy on a very large multi-industrial estate just because tenants come and go. Looking at the 9.7%, we do have another 0.3% under offer and another 2.2% under refurbishment.
We would hope to come to the market when it's finished and let at higher rentable levels.
Thanks, Bradley. That's clear. As I say, business as usual is a real clear focus for us. Bradley, there's one question, again, on another matter, where we are thinking a lot about this and are benefiting, which is our EV charging points part of our thinking. Do you want to just talk to what we're rolling out there and how the numbers are looking?
Yeah. With EV charging points, you have different approaches. If you have an office space, an EV charging point would be considered an amenity. It'd be like having changing rooms. Your tenant would like to have EV charging points so that their employees can benefit from them, and it's kind of wrapped up as an amenity rather than a direct charge that we get. What I would say is, if you want to let an office these days, you probably would need to be offering EV chargers. There's also a different approach with EV charging, and this applies more to, say, retail schemes. This is where members of the public will visit a retail park or a shopping center. They might visit some shops for half an hour and then leave.
If they have an EV, electric vehicle, they will benefit from using chargers available to the public, but they will pay a charge for that electricity. That's where you can make profit as an EV charger operator or as a landlord. What we do is we've come to an agreement with a fund managed by Octopus Energy, where they've installed a number of EV chargers across the SREIT retail portfolio, but also the broader Schroders U.K. platform retail portfolio. What they will do is pay us a rent to use the spaces, and they will also incur the cost of planning, construction, for the materials and labor to put the EV chargers in. We get a better asset in terms of having better amenities for the general public.
We also get a rent, so we're monetizing the car park, and the EV charger operator gets to sell energy to the public. We definitely are looking at this across the portfolio. As I said, we're very much focused on these elements of real estate.
Exactly. By the way, both achieving our sustainability objective, but importantly, Bradley, driving some very attractive levels of additional rent, which is generally not reflected within the valuer's assumptions. Again, we'll provide more color on that when we announce the finals. Look, I guess I'll just finish by saying, perhaps uncharacteristically, we have certainly always tried on this forum to be as transparent as possible, and certainly the feedback we've had from past presentations has acknowledged that. I hope we have been as transparent as we would normally be in relation to business as usual. Apologies off the back of our announcement that we can't answer some of your more detailed questions in relation to that leak announcement.
We will, as promised, take the questions away; however, and we will commit to come back to the platform with responses where we can do, even if it's more matters of principle rather than direct answers. We will also obviously endeavor to keep all shareholders, retail as well as wealth managers, up to date as that potential transaction progresses, as and when we can do. I think we'll leave it there. I'll hand back to Lily just to close things out. Again, thank you very much, everybody, on behalf of myself and Bradley for joining.
That's great. Thank you both for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the Management Team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete , and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the Management Team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.