New York-listed Ares Management Fund has announced that significant disposals in Germany have contributed to a record €1bn transaction volume over the past year.
The recent sale of a 74,000 m2 business park in Munich and 2,500-unit rental portfolio helped Ares reach the €1 bn milestone for its German business.
Munich's Kustermann Park office complex was divested to a pan-European fund manager for an undisclosed sum. The sale of a portfolio of 2,500 rental units (comprising of 2,453 multifamily units and 52 commercial units) in the North Rhine Westphalia, Southern Lower Saxony and Bremen, plus the Schleswig-Holstein catchment area of Hamburg to a listed German residential aggregator raised €130 mln.
'This has been a very active period for us in Germany, where we have led significant acquisitions and dispositions across property types including office, retail and residential, in all of the major markets across the country,' commented John Ruane, partner in the Ares Real Estate Group. 'We have been active participants in the German market for approximately 20 years and have developed relationships for sourcing and navigating complex transactions, scaling and managing institutional-quality portfolios—similar to what we have done in other European markets—and successfully exiting to the institutional market in a timely manner.'
Ares said it continued to add to its German portfolio with the recent acquisition of Zehlendorfer Welle, a 25,000 m2, mixed-use commercial asset located in Zehlendorf, one of Berlin’s most affluent districts.
