Cording Real Estate Group, the Northern Europe-focused real estate investment and asset management firm, has acquired a portfolio of office assets in a variety of large and medium-sized German cities for €143 million.
Cording purchased the portfolio on behalf of a joint venture between Danish fund manager Sparinvest Property Investors and Esas Holding, the Istanbul-based investment firm. The seller was DIC Asset, the Frankfurt-based real estate investment firm.
The portfolio comprises of 10 assets in eight different German cities. There is one property each in Hamburg, Cologne, Ulm, Kassel and Brunswick and two each in Mannheim and Erlangen. The total lettable area of the portfolio is around 1 million square feet, of which more than 90 percent is office space.
The entire portfolio is 97 percent let with major tenants including Siemens (Erlangen), Deutsche Telekom (Brunswick), BASF (Mannheim) and Nokia Solutions Networks (Ulm).
Rodney Bysh, Cording's chief executive officer said the German office market is attractive because of the lack of development projects that are either planned or underway in the sector.
“We, therefore, anticipate continued rental growth. In addition, with its local offices, Cording is well placed to manage the properties from close by,” added Bysh. “This applies in particular to the technical asset management, in which Cording has considerable in-house expertise.”
Herbert Smith Freehills advised Cording for the transaction, while BNP Paribas Real Estate and CMS Hasche Sigle facilitated the transaction on behalf of DIC.
Cording most recently publicized activity was in December when, in partnership with Warburg-HIH Invest Real Estate, it launched a €200 million vehicle targeting residential and office assets in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The open-ended fund, Benelux Commercial Real Estate Fund, was created on behalf of Helaba Invest, the investment arm of Frankfurt-based bank Helaba, and German insurance firm SV SparkassenVersicherung. The firms are targeting around €200 million of equity but once leverage is factored in Cording and Warburg-HIH will have a total investment capacity of €300 million.
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