JLL hired to market 10 public buildings in Italy

Asset manager Investire Immobiliare, part of Banca Finnat Euramerica, has hired JLL to sell 10 assets held by Italian state-owned fund FIP.

The properties, which will be marketed on an asset-by-asset basis, generate over €11 mln in annual rents and are located in Rome, Genoa, Trieste, Pavia and La Spezia.

The buildings are among the 21 assets which have been offered for sale by FIP (Fondi Immobili Pubblici) in the past few months. Blackstone bought five office buildings in Milan (2), Genoa, Turin and Como for about €160 mln last year while US private equity group Cerberus is understood to have acquired another sub-portfolio consisting of three army barracks in Bari, Rome and Bergamo as well as a number of other smaller assets across Italy for around €250 mln.

PropertyEU also reported last month that US investor Kennedy Wilson is in negotiations to acquire another FIP sub-portfolio of office buildings in a government-let deal worth between €250 and €300 mln.

The deal, which is being negotiated off-market, includes a dozen offices in northern Italy.

Privatisation drive
Launched in 2004, FIP was the first real estate fund to be created by the Italian government as part of a major privatisation effort and owns around 400 buildings across the country. Asset manager Investire Immobiliare hired CBRE in May last year to market 21 FIP assets consisting of office buildings let entirely to the public administration. The total portfolio has a value of around €800 mln and covers a total 800,000 m2 of space.

The assets are home to public administration offices including public pension funds INAIL, INPS, the ministry of transport, the Internal Revenue Service, the Customs Agency, the police, the ministry of labour and the Territorial Agency.

All the properties are leased with a master lease agreement to the Agenzia del Demonio, the country's public real estate agency, with a contract running to December 2022. In total, the portfolio generates annual gross rents of over €63 mln.