International real estate firm Hines has acquired the Atrium Charlottenburg office building in Berlin, for a price in excess of €160 mln on behalf of the Hines European Value Fund (HEVF).
The building consists of up to nine floors of offices and offers a net rentable area of 40,000 m2.
Located on Berlin’s Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee, the building is 100% leased to tenants including Land Berlin, Jobcenter Berlin Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Fraunhofer Fokus.
'We are happy to have secured this exciting investment opportunity for our HEVF,' said Dr. Kai-Magnus Schulte, director of Hines Immobilien.
'The building offers a rare combination of a good inner-city location, high flexibility, a very strong tenant line-up and substantial potential to create value through physical improvements and leasing activities. Our local team has significant expertise in development, asset management and value creation and we are eager to create new value in the Atrium Charlottenburg,' Schulte added.
Over the coming years Hines said it planned to identify and evaluate potential upgrades, improvements and modernisations to the building, from construction to re-letting, with the hope of generating significant rental uplift within the building.
The acquisition of Atrium Charlottenburg is HEVF’s first investment into the Berlin office market and the seventh investment by the fund since December 2017. Over 65% of the fund’s €721 mln investor equity commitments are now allocated to a diversified portfolio including office, retail, hotel, residential and logistics in Germany, Denmark, Spain and the UK, Hines said.
Christoph Reschke, senior managing director of Hines Immobilien added: 'Our great confidence in Berlin's excellent long-term prospects and development is ongoing and it is our strategy to overweight Berlin exposure.
'The current sentiment in the office market is leading to a substantial uplift of non-traditional office locations within the inner-city. As such upgrading of existing buildings in these locations have become a viable addition to speculative developments and buying core. Atrium Charlottenburg is already benefiting from this transition which will continue further in the future.'
Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale (HELABA) served as the financing bank in this transaction.
Hines was legally supported by Pöllath + Partners, technically supported by Arcadis, and tax as well as structure advise was provided by BakerTilly.
BNP Paribas Real Estate acted as transaction advisor on behalf of the vendor.
