Halverton Real Estate Investment Management (Halverton REIM) has
already exceeded the investment target for the year 2006. Initially, the investment managers had planned to be able to invest €400 million in German business properties this year. "We already surpassed this target by the beginning of June 2006 with €462 million and 33 acquired properties", reports Alexander Hoff, boss of Halverton Germany.
Due to the large demand from potential investors, Halverton has now issued a second fund, increasing the intended investment volume for Germany for the HBI Fund, which was already issued in 2005 by several hundred million euros. It is planned that the new fund will invest a total of €1 billion in European office properties. Of this total, some €500 million is earmarked for German properties €300 million of which is still planned for 2006.
Halverton's property buyers wish to concentrate primarily on two categories of office properties. One major focus of attention will be inner-city properties in medium-sized and large towns with a population between 80,000 and 250,000. Halverton's second focus of attention for the new fund will be latest generation business parks with as many different users as possible and an office area proportion of 8085 %. These properties should be in the city outskirts of the ten most important German property locations. Halverton wishes to invest between €5 million and €15 million per property.
With €1 billion, the company intends to finance the new fund in a manner similar to the HBI fund's financing. The HBI fund investment volume allotted to Germany for 2006 was increased from €400 million to €700 million just a short while ago. The abbreviation HBI in the name of the fund stands for Halverton Babcock Industrial. Both Babcock & Brown, an Australian investment bank, and GPT, an Australian REIT quoted on the stock exchange, are Halverton's joint-venture partners for this fund. All the properties acquired in Germany by Halverton to date, were purchased for the HBI fund.
The new fund is associated with a further expansion of the asset management capacities. Following Frankfurt and Berlin, Halverton will probably already open their third German office, in Munich, in mid-September 2006.
Source: Halverton
