The owners of Earls Lane Shopping Centre in Carlisle are hoping to pocket a £500,000 profit by selling it after just five months.

Birkwood Estates, a family-owned property business based in Macclesfield, Cheshire, paid £1.4m to acquire the shopping centre in July.

Now Birkwood plans to sell it at auction in London on December 10. Auctioneer Acuitus CORR is advertising the lot with a guide price of £1.9m.

The L-shaped shopping centre runs between Lowther Street and Lonsdale Street. It extends to 1.4 acres and is made up of 11 retail units and one office suite, with 41,949sq ft total floorspace, plus Carlisle bus station.

Joanna Lloyd, managing director of Birkwood Estates, said: “Our main objective with Earls Lane was to refurbish and let the centre, which we have managed to achieve in a relatively short period of time. We are quite happy with what we’ve done and want to focus on larger schemes.

“We’ve had quite a lot of interest in Earls Lane but decided the best way to dispose of it was to put it into auction.”

Birkwood bought Earls Lane after the previous owner, Watsham Finance Corporation, became insolvent.

At the time, around half the units were vacant. The only occupiers were Stagecoach, TJ Morris trading as Home Bargains, Games Workshop, Tanzo, and Coco Bay Tanning Salon. 

Since then, Birkwood has persuaded cosmetics and toiletries retailer Savers Health and Beauty to take the former Toymaster unit fronting Lowther Street, while Coco Bay will expand into a vacant unit next to its salon.

Birkwood also says it has signed up a retro sweets retailer and agreed terms with a mobility shop and a computer repair shop. Assuming these leases are signed, annual rental income will be £274,600 giving a yield of 14.5 per cent on the guide price.