GLOBAL - Zug-based property private equity firm Corestate Capital has divested German urban residential assets for €51m.
Corestate sold the repositioned assets - located in Berlin, Frankfurt, Dresden, Leipzig and Lower Saxony - to one overseas institutional investor and a number of individual buyers.
Corporate development manager Nikolai Dëus von Homeyer said: "The administrative burden is a little higher because you're dealing with multiple buyers. There is more to do - but you realise higher returns."
COO Thomas Landschreiber meanwhile announced that the firm planned to increase transactions involving its value-added programme "both on the acquisition and disposition side".
Dëus von Homeyer said today the lack of availability of debt finance created more opportunities to acquire residential assets, but that the film would not necessarily reinvest the proceeds in residential.
"Retail is still strong," he said. "We'll allocate money to asset classes and markets with upside potential. Berlin is booming. North Westphalia isn't. But you need to know what's happening on the ground, and how it will perform in future."
In other news, UK property firm Development Securities has acquired a £103m (€130m) portfolio of loans linked to pan-UK assets from NAMA via a joint venture with the family-owned Pears Group.
The Chrome portfolio comprises 39 primarily retail (55%) and residential (36%) assets in the capital (65%) and across secondary UK locations.
NAMA pitched the portfolio as a short to medium-term opportunity with the potential to add value via active management, but refused to consider breaking up the portfolio.
Development Securities, which will be a minority partner in the joint venture, first announced the acquisition of the then 38-asset portfolio back in February, but did not respond today to requests for comment on why it had taken five months to close the deal.
In the meantime, it acquired London's 112-unit Wick Lane Wharf from NAMA in April for £15.7m.
Union Investment has acquired a fully let logistics asset in Hamburg for an undisclosed price from the Schroder EuroLogistik Fund.
The buyer said the asset, which has a "financially sound tenant in a location with strong prospects", would help diversify its logistics portfolio.
SEB cited anti-cyclicality for its €72m acquisition of a new Osaka office, hotel and retail asset for its SEB Asia REI core/core-plus Spezialfonds.
The fund manager, which now owns a 14-asset Asian portfolio worth around €1.4bn, pointed to creditworthy long-term tenants in what managing board member Siegfried Cofalka described as a "compelling" investment.
