GERMANY – German real estate company Patrizia is launching a Spezialfonds to buy a domestic office portfolio for a group of German institutions.

Patrizia has signed a binding agreement with a subsidiary of Austria's CA Immobilien to purchase 36 offices with a rental space of around 450,000m2 in the German province Hessen.

A spokesman for the German real estate company confirmed to IPE that, for this transaction, "a lot of new investors could be won", including insurers, Pensionskassen and savings banks.

Unlike the last investment Patrizia concluded for an institutional consortium – the major GBW deal earlier this year – the deal will not involve co-investing.

Instead, it will launch a Spezialfonds into which the portfolio will be transferred once it has been purchased.

The Patrizia spokesman said the portfolio consisted of offices occupied by regional ministries, courts, police departments and financial authorities of the province of Hessen.

He added that this was an opportunity for very "safety-oriented investors", as rental agreements have been signed until 2036 and then automatically extended by three years.

Further, the rents are fully indexed, which makes the investment "inflation-linked".

The estimated value of the portfolio is €800m, and the deal is scheduled to be closed by the end of the year.