DEGI Deutsche Gesellschaft für Immobilienfonds mbH has purchased a fully let office building in the Avenue Louise in the center of Brussels, Belgium, for its DEGI INTERNATIONAL fund, for a total investment of €41.2 million. The 12-story building, with 26,405 m² of lettable area, is currently being used by the Belgian Government for their Finance Department.
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The office building is currently being
used by the Belgian Government.
The seller is the Belgian project development company Burco Europe, which after the current tenancy agreement expires will, during the course of 2009, manage an extensive refurbishment and modernization programme for the building, which was built in 1975. The contract also includes marketing of the space, which will then conform to Class A standard.
"The preconditions for securing attractive tenants are very good, thanks to the building's quality and its central location," says Bärbel Schomberg, Speaker of DEGI's Management Board. "In addition, due to the incentivization structures of the contract, Burco itself is keen to see the property let successfully."
The inner-city submarket Louise is one of the most coveted office locations in Brussels, due to its high-quality mixed utilization structure and its good infrastructural links. The building is conveniently situated for public transport, with nearby bus and tram stops. With a standard floor area of around 2,000 m², the building constitutes an exception among the office premises in the Louise submarket, which are otherwise let in small portions. The building can be divided vertically into two independent units.
With this purchase, the fund has now acquired its fourth property in the EU metropolis, whose inner-city office market is regarded as exceptionally stable, thanks to high demand from EU institutions, associations, representative offices and multinational companies, plus a vacancy ratio of 3% to 7%. This transaction increases Belgium's share in the fund's regional allocation to approximately 9.6%.
Source: Allianz
