BNP Paribas Real Estate Investment Management (BNP Paribas REIM) has purchased an office property near Düsseldorf in Germany from LaSalle Investment Management.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The asset, situated in Ratingen, was held by pan-European fund LaSalle E-Regi, which purchased the asset in September 2011.
During LaSalle's ownership, the principal tenant, Coca Cola, decided to relocate their headquarters in 2012 and moved out before their lease expired. Subsequently the asset was restructured to a multi-tenant building and an office lease agreement with a fashion retailer as an anchor tenant, which accounted for 40% of the rent until end of September 2019. Since October 2019, large parts of the vacated floors have been re-let to a variety of companies, LaSalle said.
Uwe Rempis, managing director and fund manager of LaSalle E-Regi, said: 'We are pleased to have successfully sold the Zwei-Scheiben-Haus in Ratingen after delivering on our strategy of a long-term hold period and active asset management.
'The deal represents another strong contribution to the positive risk-adjusted returns we continue to generate for investors in LaSalle E-Regi. In this case, we will reinvest the sales proceeds into our residential allocation in order to further improve our diversification.'
The property, which was one of the first Leed platinum-certified buildings in Germany, comprises two modern high-quality office buildings, of seven and five storeys respectively; these are connected by a ground-floor canteen and a two-storey underground carpark, with a combined area of over 11,300 m2.
It is located in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. According to LaSalle, a steady increase in office take-up drove the region’s vacancy rate to record lows in 2019 and supported the property’s strong performance under LaSalle’s ownership.
LaSalle was advised by Beiten Burkhardt as legal advisor, Drees&Sommer as technical advisor and Savills as commercial advisor.
