Patrizia has signed a €600 mln forward funding deal to acquire a 10-building Spanish residential portfolio for its Living Cities fund.
The sites, in and around Barcelona, will provide 1,500 rental homes and are being developed by Catalan private company Becorp, the family office of the Grifols family.
Speaking at Mipim, Patrizia senior managing director Rob Brook said the transaction was now signed. ‘I don’t think there’s anything like this in Barcelona. The transaction is very much about investing in growth cities.’
Advised by Bank of America, Becorp launched the sale back in 2020, when it originally looked for an equity partner to take a stake in the operating business which included a slightly larger BTR portfolio of 12 sites, for €800m.
Danish pension fund PFA was originally in discussions with Becorp but it is thought that the investor pulled out due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.
The Becorp acquisition takes Patrizia’s open-ended Living Cities to about €1.5bn invested. The fund launched in November 2019.
The residential sector accounted for by far the largest that Patrizia invested in last year. Last month the firm said €3.3 bn of signed 2021 transactions were residential followed by €1.7 bn of offices.
Approximately two-thirds of a total €7.6 bn of 2021 deals were acquisitions; most sales volume (c€1 bn) was of food-anchored retail.
CBRE advised on the Catalan deal, which is financed by CaixaBank.
