NREP, a Nordic urban investor with €18 bn of assets under management, has announced the opening of two German offices and the signing of its first real estate investment in the country, as anticipated by PropertyEU.
The company, which last month appointed Rune Kock as new real estate CEO, has opened offices in Frankfurt and Munich and established a dedicated team of eight initial employees on the ground.
With a plan to invest €500 mln over the next three years, NREP will pursue opportunities mainly within the company’s two largest and longstanding real estate strategies, modern logistics and rental housing, both of which have demographically driven demand characteristics and are structurally undersupplied with old stock.
For its debut German investment, NREP has entered a long-term joint venture with Artisa Group, a major Swiss real estate developer operating across European markets. The joint venture plans to deliver 5,000 co-living apartments by 2025, and the first investment is an acquisition of two co-living assets offering a total of 314 individual apartments.
One of the assets, located in proximity to the new business district Mediaspree in Berlin, will be DNGB Gold certified once completed in 2024. The second property comprises a standing office-to-residential conversion, which is currently undergoing light refurbishment while already being in operation, centrally located in Essen.
The buildings’ sustainability performance will continuously be improved through their life cycle. The joint venture has a strong pipeline, including immediate opportunities comprising 670 units in Frankfurt. All properties will be operated under Artisa’s established co-living platform, CityPop.
Alain Artioli, president of Artisa Group, said: ‘The undersupplied housing sector in Germany is partly driven by having one of the highest shares of single households in Europe, which is expected to further increase to 44% by 2035.’
Jani Nokkanen, Real Estate CIO at NREP, added: ‘Almost 80% of inhabitants in larger German cities rent their homes, yet there remains a significant supply-demand imbalance for high quality accommodation in well-connected urban areas. We have identified where these pressures are most acutely felt and see an immediate opportunity to apply NREP’s proven perspectives on livability, sustainability, customer-centricity and urban design to the German market, innovatively packaged through City Pop’s co-living concept.’
NREP extended its presence beyond its home region in 2021 by entering the Polish market. The business subsequently further expanded both vertically and geographically through the acquisition of a German real estate credit specialist, Flins Capital Partners.
