JER and partners storm Moscow

The US firm has become the latest foreign investor to invest in Russia’s developing real estate market.

JER Partners and Moscow-based private equity real estate firm Alfa Capital Partners are funding a one-million-square-foot office complex on the outskirts of Moscow through their co-managed Marbleton Property Fund.

The partners have formed a joint venture with Russian company, Storm Properties, to develop the suburban office park located on a 9-hectare plot, JER said in a statement.

“We strongly believe that this transaction offers an opportunity to capitalise on the supply and demand imbalance for high quality office space in Moscow in general and a trend toward more efficient and less expensive space outside of the city limits,” Malcolm Le May, Europe president at JER Partners, said of the agreement.

Russia is attracting increasing interest from foreign investors. In September, US firm Apollo secured funding from European-based property lender, Hypo Real Estate, for a large industrial scheme in Lobnia to the north of Moscow while Aberdeen Property Investors announced the launch of a €500million ($709 million) Russia-focused fund.

JER and Alfa closed the Marbleton Property Fund in June on $321 million. The fund focuses on investments across all property sectors in Russia, Ukraine and CIS.

Its partner in the Moscow project, Storm, is 50 percent owned by Russia’s PIK Group, a Moscow-based residential real estate development company that listed in London and Moscow this past summer.

Strom has approximately 450,000 square meters of projects on the slate.