LaSalle Investment Management is raising a £400 million ($626 million) fund to pick up bargain property in a UK market where some assets are being sold at 20 to 30 per cent discounts to their value, a company executive has told Reuters.

The LaSalle UK Ventures Fund II is scheduled to close in the first quarter of 2009 and is aiming for 20 per cent internal rates of return, according to Paul Richards, LaSalle's head of global managed accounts.

The fund will increase its available spend with borrowing limited to 75 per cent of total assets and will seek development opportunities as well as distressed assets.

"In the last two to three months, we've been seeing properties on the market where you think it's good value," Mr Richards told Reuters. "People who've got cash to invest should be quite happy at the moment."

He said the volume of commercial property deals in the UK had dropped to a third of the level a year ago, but that he expected transactions to pick up at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

"People have got to clear their balance sheets at the end of the year," he said. "Some of the unlisted funds that had big redemption requests in Q1 and Q2 this year deferred for a year, and now they've got to meet them. So there may be forced sellers."