Unilever's pension fund Progress has kicked off the divestment of its direct property portfolio with a sale of 30 residential assets in the Dutch city of Nijmegen to a private investor. The sale included seven garage boxes and 845 m[sup]2[/sup] of office space.
Unilever's pension fund Progress has kicked off the divestment of its direct property portfolio with a sale of 30 residential assets in the Dutch city of Nijmegen to a private investor. The sale included seven garage boxes and 845 m2 of office space.
The name of the buyer and the financial details were not disclosed. CB Richard Ellis acted for Progress, with Loyens & Loeff providing legal advice.
Progress instructed CBRE in January this year to begin marketing its direct property holdings in the Netherlands. The fund is from now to focus its property investment strategy on non-listed international real estate funds.
The total portfolio, valued at EUR 600 mln, comprised 52 blocks with 2,400 homes and 40,000 m2 of retail space spread across the Netherlands. Progress said the assets could be sold as individual units or in clusters in a transparent process. A number of investors were invited to bid either for all or portions of the portfolio by the end of February. The pension fund said in January it hoped to complete the sale in the second quarter of this year.
