Portuguese pension fund offloads four properties

Portuguese energy utility EDP's pension fund has sold four buildings in Lisbon’s Central Business District in the largest property deal to be carried out in the city’s CBD in the last decade.

The four buildings have been sold to Global Asset Capital, a global investment house with offices in the US and Europe. CBRE acted for the vendor while Global Asset Capital was represented by JLL.

The parties declined to disclose the sale price, saying only that the transaction is the 9th and largest Portuguese real estate investment to be registered in 2014 and brings the combined deal volume for this year to €100 mln.

The EDP portfolio comprises the buildings located at 12 and 13, Marquês de Pombal Square and 43 and 45, Camilo Castelo Branco Street, totalling an area of around 24,000 m2.

EDP plans to relocate to new a headquarters and other building in Cabo Ruivo, Lisbon, which are currently under development.

Francisco Horta e Costa, managing director of CBRE Portugal, commented: ‘This transaction shows that the real estate market is definitely recovering and that foreign investors’ appetites for prominent Portuguese investments have returned.’

The deal confirms market predictions that Portugal will be the next port of call for international real estate investors seeking opportunities in undervalued markets.

‘Opportunistic buyers are looking at markets that have seen a downturn and where value can be found,’ Cushman & Wakefield's head of EMEA capital markets Jan-Willem Bastijn said in an interview with PropertyEU at end-April.

‘Most of the international money is looking for opportunities in gateway cities like London, Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. But opportunistic buyers are looking at the Iberian peninsula and we’re seeing more and more deals in Spain, and not just the prime stuff. In some deals like Castellana (a prime mixed-use asset in Madrid ed.) we’ve seen 20 offers, all of them international. Opportunistic buyers are all looking at Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands. Portugal will follow,’ he noted.