Care homes, senior living and shopping centres emerged as the top choices for investment at PropertyEU's Benelux Investment Briefing on Tuesday. The event was hosted at the annual Realty Brussels fair which is being held in the Belgian capital this week.
Care homes, senior living and shopping centres emerged as the top choices for investment at PropertyEU's Benelux Investment Briefing on Tuesday. The event was hosted at the annual Realty Brussels fair which is being held in the Belgian capital this week.
Asked to comment on which segments and locations he would choose to invest a notional EUR 500 mln, panellist Heino Vink, CEO of shopping centre developer Multi Corporation, said real estate connected to the needs of the aging population would be his top choice. 'I would spread the money and not put it all into one project or sector. While I have yet to see the best concept I would invest in something to do with taking care of the elderly. If one thing is certain in life it´s that we are all growing older and will need more care and help at some stage.'
Vink said he would also invest in smaller and larger shopping centres in the larger cities of the Benelux such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Brugge. 'I would pick inner-city retail locations - established market places since those cities were founded hundreds if not thousands of years ago.'
Retail was the first choice for fellow panellist Peter Wilhelm, CEO of Wilhelm & Co, who said he was a strong believer in investing in 'what you understand'. 'I understand retail which is not just a real estate asset. It is very special, somewhere in between real estate and an operational business like hotels so you need double the expertise to understand it.'
Turning to specifics on where he would invest his EUR 500 mln, Wilhelm said the Neo shopping centre-anchored project in northern Brussels looked attractive. He noted, though, that the tendering process for the Neo project, championed by Brussels municipality, had just begun and that he was therefore speaking hypothetically. 'I would invest in Neo as there is demand for a large shopping centre in Brussels. So if it is well conceived it is almost a no-brainer.'
Most shopping centres in Belgium are between 25 and 35 years old. Wilhelm is a developer of retail-led, mixed-use schemes in Belgium, France Italy and Portugal.
Tristan Dhondt, Real Estate leader Belgium at Ernst & Young told the briefing that he would invest the notional funds in retail and residential property in inner-city locations in the Benelux.
