NREP has made its first real estate investment in Germany as part of its plan to expand across Northern Europe.
Last year, NREP extended beyond the Nordics by entering the Polish market. The €18bn asset manager later expanded both vertically and geographically through the acquisition of a German real estate credit specialist, Flins Capital Partners.
NREP said it has now formed a partnership with developer Artisa Group to deliver 5,000 co-living apartments by 2025. The properties will be operated under CityPop, Artisa’s co-living platform.
The partnership’s first investment is an acquisition of two co-living assets offering a total of 314 individual apartments. The maiden investment includes an asset in Berlin and a property comprising a standing office-to-residential conversion in Essen.
With a plan to invest €500m over the next three years, NREP said will pursue opportunities mainly within the company’s two largest real estate strategies, modern logistics and customer-centric rental housing.
Rune Kock, NREP’s real estate CEO, said: “Germany has Europe’s strongest economy and presents clear trends of urbanization, which makes it particularly receptive to NREP’s expertise in improving the built environment of cities.
“We have capabilities to create more customer-oriented products and implement ESG initiatives more broadly, which has proved a successful approach when expanding into new Northern European territories.”
Alain Artioli, president of Artisa Group, said: “The undersupplied housing sector in Germany is partly driven by having one of the highest shares of single households in Europe, which is expected to further increase to 44% by 2035.”
Jani Nokkanen, NREP’s real estate CIO, said: “Almost 80% of inhabitants in larger German cities rent their homes, yet there remains a significant supply-demand imbalance for high-quality accommodation in well-connected urban areas.
“We have identified where these pressures are most acutely felt and see an immediate opportunity to apply NREP’s proven perspectives on livability, sustainability, customer-centricity and urban design to the German market, innovatively packaged through City Pop’s co-living concept.”
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