US fund manager Nuveen Real Estate has gone for a subsector of the Nordic housing market as it seeks to deploy €350 mln of dry powder for a value added strategy.
Its debut single housing investment for its European value add fund is the €42 mln capital commitment for an initial 141 units across four single family estates in Helsinki, Finland.
The deal comes as it extends fundraising for the whole year, and while the firm focuses on 'mispricing and repositioning' opportunities in line with global megatrends. Currently, the strategy has in excess of €350 mln of dry powder following an additional closing in March this year.
Nuveen is forward funding the Helsinki development, and is partnering with developer Toivo Group Oyj for the affordable and energy-efficient homes. Alongside Toivo, and local operating partner, Trevian, Nuveen has ambitions to build out additional single family estates in the region, which will help to provide a high quality, sustainable rental housing solution. In the Nordics, Nuveen manages over €200 mln of assets across the housing sector and has firm ambitions to become one of the region’s leading investment managers in the living space.
David Pearce, fund manager, real estate, Europe, said: 'We adopted a patient capital deployment strategy in 2023 with valuations in some sectors and markets taking longer to filter through. Following the extension of our fundraising period to the end of 2024, the team is well positioned to take advantage of the repricing across Europe and seek attractive risk adjusted returns in our target sectors, which can offer substantial scalability potential.’
Kim Särs, CIO at Trevian, added: 'Single-family homes represent a highly appealing yet underserved segment within Finland's real estate landscape, and the market fundamentals offer robust support for concentrating on this niche.'
The European Value Add strategy has a cross-sector outlook and is scouting deals in the UK and Europe, focusing on urban logistics, housing and alternatives. In 2023, the strategy announced its first transaction with the acquisition of a self-storage portfolio in the UK.
It is an Article 8 fund.
