German doctors’ pension scheme Nordrheinische Ärzteversorgung (NAEV) and two other local pension funds have backed Catella Residential Investment Management’s (CRIM) European fund with €185m worth of commitments.

Berlin-based CRIM said the additional capital raised by the Catella European Residential III fund (CER III) takes the amount received by the fund, since its launch in 2019, to €475m. Of the total amount, €365m was raised in the last 12 months during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Details of the other two German pension funds were undisclosed. 

CBRE Capital Advisors, CRIM’s partner for international client relations, advised on the latest funding round.

The fund’s next closing is planned for the second quarter of this year.

CER III currently has 13 assets located across six European countries, the manager said, adding that it expects to complete another €100m of transactions in the coming weeks. It also has more than €300m of deals in its forward investment pipeline across Europe.

CRIM said the fund is on track to achieving its mid-term investment target of €1bn of assets under management and ”establishing a multi-billion open-ended investment vehicle across European residential real estate markets for German and international institutional investors”.

The manager said the fund will be reclassified as an Article 9 dark green impact fund under the taxonomy of the EU’s sustainable finance disclosure regulation.

Michael Fink, managing director at CRIM, said: “We are welcoming three new German pension funds into CER III as it transitions to impact fund status in the next few months under the EU’s green deal regulations and we anticipate that together with our partner for international clients, CBRE Capital Advisors, we will soon be able to disclose the participation of more first-time investors.

“These institutional investors recognise the increasing importance of incorporating sustainability and innovation, in combination with affordable rental homes, in their residential real estate investment strategies.”

Xavier Jongen, managing director at CRIM, said: “In early April, we announced that Catella’s CER III Fund had acquired in France the first in a planned €2bn investment programme of 100 Elithis residential towers across Europe.

“They represent a radical break from traditional mainstream investment risk models that are not fit for purpose in meeting the climatic and societal challenges that lie ahead, towards the concept of ‘anti-fragility’ or ‘Black Swan tail risk’ investing.

“This is a global first in real estate investment and it is occurring in the largest and most scalable asset class of all –residential property, which is bigger than all equities and fixed income markets combined.”

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