Listed high street specialist Vastned aims to spend the proceeds of recent divestments and looming disposals in its home market the Netherlands on assets on ‘the best shopping streets in the best shopping cities in large Western European cities’, the company’s CEO Taco de Groot told PropertyEU in an interview.
The Amsterdam-listed company has around €100 mln to spend after selling off properties worth a similar amount in 2016 and its entire Turkish portfolio earlier this year. In 2016, Vastned disposed of €95 mln of non-strategic assets including properties worth some €71 mln in smaller and medium-sized cities in the Netherlands. De Groot said he was aiming to generate roughly €100 mln from sales of another batch of non-high street assets in the Dutch market, but did not specify a time frame for the disposals.
Last year Vastned sold roughly €50 mln of its non-strategic assets in the Netherlands to local investor Urban Interest in a portfolio deal. Part of the remaining non-strategic assets in the Netherlands may be sold to owner-occupiers or foreign investors, De Groot said. In the latter case, a portfolio deal would be the most likely route. ‘Foreign investors tend to want a bigger ticket,’ he added.
In terms of new acquisitions, Vastned is targeting five European cities – Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, Madrid and Barcelona – in its bid to upgrade its existing portfolio which totalled €1.6 bn at end-December last year. The company is not alone: a growing number of investors from all parts of the world are targeting retail properties on Europe’s leading high streets and many of them, in particular family offices or high net worth individuals, are prepared to pay high prices simply to preserve wealth.
De Groot conceded that it isn’t easy to find the right high street asset at the right price, but said the company already had properties in many of the top locations in Europe’s best shopping cities such as Paris - where it owns an asset on the Rue de Rivoli (pictured) - as well as people on the ground. ‘It can help to wave lots of money, but my role is to create value in the long term. We looked at €3 bn of opportunities in 2016, but we’re not in the business of short-term gains via yield compression. We’re aiming to create a chain of pearls. We look at assets with the potential to be a good deal representing long-term value.’
The full interview with Taco de Groot appears in the April edition of PropertyEU.
