Behringer Harvard in $200m German fundraising

Dallas-based fund manager Behringer Harvard is seeking to raise over $200 mln (EUR 145 mln) of equity from German institutional investors for a new fund targeting multi-family residential properties in the US. ‘

The new Behringer Harvard Select I vehicle will be investing alongside our US fund, BH Multifamily REIT I through a 50/50 partnership which will have a spending power of up to $1 bn,’ the group’s president Robert Aisner said in an interview with PropertyEU during the first day of EXPO REAL in Munich. The company expects to close the European fundraising process by end-December.

‘We are excited about the multi-family residential market segment. It is the first sector coming out of the recession and the first in the rebound, showing the fastest growth from a cash-flow point of view as well as from an occupier perspective,’ Aisner added. Low supply of new housing units, combined with a growing demand for rental apartments as a result of the credit crisis, is fuelling a surprisingly swift recovery for the sector in the US, according to Aisner.

In Continental Europe, the group’s European arm has been investing in the past three years for the Dutch pension fund PGGM, which awarded Behringer Harvard a $300 mln single-client mandate. ‘We are seeing strong interest from European institutional investors which are starting to come out of the recession after waiting on the sidelines for the past two years.’

Behringer Harvard Europe, which is based in Hamburg and is run by Oliver Georg and Olaf Fortmann, has a real estate portfolio worth around EUR 250 mln, mostly located in Germany, The Netherlands, the UK and CEE. Georg said the company will be focusing on value-added office property investments in the more stable markets of Germany and The Netherlands. ‘We are currently in negotiations on two assets in Munich and Hamburg. We might also consider teaming up with a local partner for investment in new markets, such as London, Central Europe or Italy.’ In Eastern Europe, Behringer Harvard has a EUR 110 mln partnership with Edinburgh-based Hunter Property Fund Management on a retail and logistics portfolio in Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.