Banks emerge as biggest seller of German real estate

The financial sector was behind over €5 bn of real estate disposals in Germany in the past three years, according to new research published by Jones Lang LaSalle.

This represents a marked increase on the €1.5 bn in financial sector disposals recorded between 2008 and 2010.

In total, banks' share of the German real estate investment market ranged between 1.4% and 4.7% from 2008 to 2010, but this has more than doubled in the past two years, when banks have accounted for 6.2% to 8.1% of the country's total transactional volume.

According to JLL, no other investor group has achieved a larger relative increase in sales over the past two years.

German open-ended funds - often referred to as the country's largest vendors - have completed sales of €4.5 bn since 2011.

According to JLL's research, most disposals were carried out in the core investment spectrum (75%) while core-plus and value-add represented a 9% and 7% share respectively. Opportunistic transactions made up the remaining 9%.

'What is remarkable in this context is the high proportion of sales of core properties,' said These Helge Scheunemann, head of JLL's research in Germany.