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Empty Dutch offices hit German investors - DE VOLKSKRANT

Some 25% of vacant office buildings in the Netherlands are owned by German investors and roughly 30% of the vacant buildings are financed by a German bank loan, according to a study by national newspaper De Volkskrant.

The German owners are primarily investment funds and include KanAm and CommerzReal. KanAM owns the Blaak Office Tower in Rotterdam while CommerzReal has the former KPMG headquarters in Amstelveen in its portfolio. The former KPMG head office is the second-largest vacant building in the Netherlands with 47,000 m² for rent. The former head office of the Dutch statistics agency CBS in Leidschendam (near Leiden) is the Netherland's biggest empty building with 60,000 m².

Slightly more than half of the empty office buildings in the Netherlands are owned by Dutch project developers, banks and investment funds. State, provincial or municipal government bodies own roughly 10% of the vacant buildings while 3.8% is in the hands of Dutch pension funds.