Vesteda buys majority of Philips Pension fund's residential holdings

Dutch real estate investment fund Vesteda has acquired just over 1,000 homes from Philips Pension Fund. The assets are valued at more than EUR 200 mln and generate EUR 600 to EUR 1,000 rent each a month. This was Vesteda's largest acquisition to date and it now owns 27,000 private-sector homes.

The sale was the first step in a strategic move by Philips Pension Fund to withdraw from direct real estate investment. The homes sold to Vesteda accounted for 20% of the pension fund's direct real estate portfolio. The pension fund expects to sell the rest of its residential property assets before the end of December.

Ironically, Philips Pension Fund has unwittingly found itself at the centre of an investigation into allegations of corrupt direct investment real estate deals in the Netherlands. Neither the pension fund nor its property arm, Philips Real Estate Investment Management (PREIM), are accused of wrongdoing, but the former head of PREIM, identified by the police only as Will F, is suspected of earning EUR 11 mln from corrupt property transactions. He was among a group of 16 people arrested last month in police raids on 54 premises in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. The chief suspect, Jan van V, the former director of Bouwfonds Development, is suspected of pocketing EUR 64 mln.

The investigation is ongoing but to date no one has been charged with any crime. Most of the people held in the raids were subsequently released.