A joint venture between Qatar Holding and Credit Suisse has bought 16 apartment blocks in the Netherlands from asset manager Bouwinvest, PropertyEU has learned.
A joint venture between Qatar Holding and Credit Suisse has bought 16 apartment blocks in the Netherlands from asset manager Bouwinvest, PropertyEU has learned.
Financial details were not disclosed, but market sources put the price in the region of €100 mln.
The apartment blocks, comprising 723 units, were sold by Bouwinvest’s Dutch Institutional Residential Fund to Aventicum Capital, a joint venture set up in 2012 by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and Credit Suisse.
The deal was first signalled at the Provada property fair in Amsterdam in June, and comes amid a rash of residential property transactions in the Netherlands. Government reforms coupled with cyclical market drivers are driving strong foreign interest in the sector at a time that major portfolios are coming to the market.
Just last week, German property company Patrizia Immobilien announced it was acquiring a residential portfolio in the Netherlands for €578 mln from Dutch housing association Vestia in the largest deal ever in the Dutch housing sector. And in June, UK-based Round Hill Capital bought a nationwide portfolio of housing units from CBRE Global Investors for €180 mln.
Commenting on the sale to the Qataris, Allard van Spaandonk, Bouwinvest’s managing director for the Netherlands, said: ‘The reforms to the rental market and the favourable outlook have increased the appetite of investors for Dutch residential assets, providing us with an excellent opportunity to recycle capital and rebalance the portfolio.’
Bouwinvest was advised on the transaction by JLL and law firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek.
Some 54% of the 723 apartments sold are said to be social housing units, mostly located in regional cities across the Netherlands.
Bouwinvest said it does not expect to carry out further disposals of residential assets in the near future. On the contrary, it is looking to acquire new properties in a bid to rejuvenate its portfolio and concentrate on the major urban areas of the Randstad conurbation in the western part of the Netherlands.
Bouwinvest residential fund’s portfolio comprises approximately 15,000 rental dwellings in economically strong regions of the Netherlands, most of which are in the liberalised sector of the market and so are not subject to rent controls. The fund targets a total return of 6% to its investors and recent acquisitions include investment in developments that will create 1,900 new homes.
The Qataris have also been active in other sectors in the Netherlands. In June, the Qatari Investment Authority (QIA) bought the Dutch company which owns five InterContinental hotels in Europe, including the Amstel hotel in Amsterdam.
