Corestate secures €500m micro-apartment mandate by BVK

Corestate Capital, the Switzerland-based private equity real estate firm has been handed a €500 million mandate by Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) to invest in micro-apartments in Europe.

The special fund, BVK-Residential Europe-Immobilienfonds Corestate, will be focused on micro-apartments in student housing properties in European university towns, with a particular focus on Germany and Austria.

Five student housing assets, containing 1,836 units and already owned by Corestate, are being seeded into the fund. Four assets are located in Germany and one asset is located in Austria.

“For us, the newly launched micro-apartment fund offers the rare opportunity to invest in a functioning portfolio with an attractive return forecast and at the same time to involve a specialist in this segment for asset management. As a result, we are also expanding our investment spectrum with a future-oriented asset class,” said André Heimrich, member of the management board of investments at BVK.

“We were one of the first investors to enter the student housing market in Germany. Together with semi-institutional investors we developed a successful investment product and at the same time set up a fully functioning operating platform for this asset class. With BVK we have now won an institutional partner who is also convinced of the value of this product,” Sascha Wilhelm, chief executive officer at Corestate.

BVK has inked a number of specialized mandates since introducing a new strategy last year.

This month, the €70 billion pension fund awarded Frankfurt-based asset manager Universal-Investment a €3.6 billion mandate to invest in European and Asian residential and office assets. Earlier in 2016, BVK inked three further large mandates worth a combined €2.1 billion. Back in July, the firm handed Patrizia Immobilien, the Augsburg-based real estate investment manager, a €400 million check to create a pan-European residential property portfolio. Just weeks earlier, the German pension fund struck a deal with long-term collaborator, Finnish private equity fund CapMan to invest €400 million in Nordic residential markets. While in January, BVK teamed up with the European arm of Houston-based fund manager Hines to launch a €1.3 billion separate account program to invest in European high street retail.