Like-for-like income and the lots you sold in March
UK asset managers are asked, every quarter, whether the fund earned more. The honest answer is often ‘yes, because we sold the weak parade’ or ‘no, because we bought a void’. Committees still receive a single income chart that mixes both effects.
Our practice is two plates. The first is like-for-like: only lots held for the whole of both periods, with a caption that names how many lots dropped out. The second is stock change: lots bought, lots sold, and the income that travelled with them. We do not net those into one ‘total movement’ arrow. Arrows invite a story the arithmetic does not support.
Capex that brings a unit back to letting condition is not income. It can sit as a small annotation on the occupancy map, not as a lift in the rent line. Service charge shortfalls are likewise kept off the passing-rent plate; they belong with recoverability.
When a mandate spans England and a small Scottish holding, we still split like-for-like inside each territory before adding. Currency is rarely the issue; lease conventions and void treatment are. A plate that adds them too early hides a regional problem the manager already knows about.
If you want a single cover number for a one-page chair brief, we will write it in words — ‘like-for-like passing rent was slightly down; reported rent rose because two sales completed’ — rather than a chart that pretends those facts are the same.