Danish pension fund PFA has made its largest-ever single real estate investment, acquiring more than €1bn of German assets from Industria Wohnen.
The €80bn institutional investor has acquired the ‘Century’ portfolio from Industria Wohnen’s first institutional Spezialfonds, launched in 2010.
Michael Bruhn, head of real estate at PFA, said: “We recently announced our intention to significantly increase the proportion of real estate in our portfolio by 2022.
“We are now implementing this new strategy, the central component of which is the expansion of our investment activities outside Denmark.”
PFA, the biggest commercial pension fund in Denmark, has hired Domicil Real Estate Group to manage the 247,278sqm portfolio, which consists of one commercial building and 33 residential buildings across 15 locations in Germany.
Two-thirds of the 3,700 residential units are in major metropolitan centres, including Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, the Rhineland and the Rhine-Neckar region.
Khaled Kaissar, founder and managing partner of Domicil, said: “The properties are primarily located in attractive and very attractive locations in sought-after residential neighbourhoods. What’s more, Century also offers substantial potential for rental growth.”
Klaus Niewöhner-Pape, managing director of Industria Wohnen, said the company was “now taking advantage of the extraordinarily positive market developments of recent years and have decided to embrace this early exit opportunity”.
