ING Real Estate buys in Germany and Romania

ING Real Estate has acquired three prime office buildings in Germany for a total EUR 90 mln. The Westend-Ottensen building in Hamburg, Ernst-August-Carre building in Hanover and Office Park Rheinlanddamm in Dortmund will be added to its European Office Fund.

'The prospects for the Hamburg office market are positive with good growth projected over the next few years,' said fund manager Leo Weidenaar. 'The Ernst-August-Carre offers exposure to Hanover's very stable office market.' In addition, the Dortmund market is growng very fast, he said. 'Take-up increased by 40% in 2006 and is expected to be strong again in 2007.'

ING Real Estate is to announce today that it has reached agreement to acquire full ownership of the Felicia shopping centre in Iasi in Romania through the purchase of Belgian development company Felicia Invest. The total investment amounts to approximately EUR 40 mln. The acquisition marks ING RE’s first acquisition in the Romanian market. The property will be added to the ING Property Fund Central and Eastern Europe (ING PFCEE), a semi-open ended real estate fund with a target size of EUR 1 bn.

Felicia Shopping Centre has a gross lettable area of approximately 26,330 sq m and is due to officially opened to the public on Wednesday. The mall is the first of its kind in the northeastern Romanian city of Iasi, which has a population of 317,812. The property’s anchor tenants include Carrefour hypermarket (not included in the transaction), a Media Galaxy electronics retailer, an Intersport sport goods retailer and a Marks & Spencer department store.

Gijs Klomp of ING Real Estate told PropertyEU that they had been lucky to get such a good property. 'There is a lot of development in Romania but the problem is that a lot of it does not fit our needs. It is a very competitive market on the investment side and developers do not have the incentive to focus on the long-term prospective. Anything will do at this stage.'