Starwood Capital and M7 Real Estate are buying €259m of light industrial property in France, Germany and Netherlands via their joint venture MStar Europe, bringing the venture past the halfway point in its investment programme.
In three deals that have been agreed or completed, MStar Europe, which was set up by the two companies in April this year, is taking on 613,000sqm of assets in the light industrial sector — meeting more than half of its €500m target.
In all, the joint venture has completed the purchase or exchanged contracts to buy 55 properties in five Western European countries.
This includes a buy-out of the listed Tamar European Industrial Fund (TEIF) along with two other transactions, according to M7 Real Estate, which specialises in managing European light industrial properties and is overseeing the MStar Europe portfolio.
MStar Europe’s public offer for TEIF was accepted by 96.4% of shareholders by the August 4th deadline.
The offer valued the portfolio of 36 properties in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden at around €130m.
In another deal, MStar Europe completed the purchase of 10 warehouses in the Netherlands from Rockspring for €71m.
The warehouses are located in the Randstad region — a conurbation of the four largest Dutch cities and surrounding areas — and have 153,000sqm of space in total.
In a third deal, the joint venture agreed to buy five light industrial properties in Germany from a fund advised by Valad for €44.7m.
Adam Shah, senior vice president at Starwood Capital, said: “These transactions are a continuation of our successful platform in the UK in acquiring light industrial real estate.”
Starwood’s first joint venture with M7 Real Estate was UK-focused vehicle MStar, which has bought 27 properties worth £70m since its launch in June 2013.
Shah said the assets bought had strong existing cash flows, and that the partners expected to give the portfolio extra value through management of them.
Richard Croft, M7 Real Estate’s chief executive, said MStar Europe had been set up to put together a portfolio of high-yielding multi-let assets, some of which would require “active and creative management.”
“We continue to see Germany as a particularly attractive market for our value-add or opportunistic approach to investment,” he said.
