SEB Asset Management has acquired the "Quartier Potsdamer Platz" real estate portfolio from Daimler. It comprises 19 properties and total space of approximately 285,000 m² in central Berlin.
The parties agreed not to disclose the purchase price. The portfolio consists of approximately 42% high-quality office and administrative space and 22% retail space, supplemented by residential and hotel space along with leisure facilities and catering establishments. The neighbouring Gleisdreieck car park also belongs to the portfolio; altogether a total of 3,877 parking spaces are available. The occupancy rate is almost 95%. The average lease term of the overall portfolio is 6.1 years.
"Quartier Potsdamer Platz" represents the outcome of extensive competitions, designs and planning by an international team of architects led by star Italian architect Renzo Piano. The properties offer sophisticated architectural features. The most well-known are the various buildings used by Daimler AG, the Grand Hyatt Berlin and the "Potsdamer Platz Arkaden" shopping centre.
SEB Asset Management's real estate fund management company acquired this broadly diversified German portfolio in one of the most prosperous areas of Berlin after selling 26 German properties in the middle of this year. Berlin is experiencing rising rents and growing investor confidence, which in turn will strengthen the market for real estate investments in the coming years. This transaction also demonstrates that equity-rich investors such as the SEB fund management company are profiting from the current shortage of liquidity on the market and that transactions on this scale can be successfully completed with much less competition.
With "Quartier Potsdamer Platz", the SEB ImmoInvest open-ended real estate fund is acquiring a very attractive and broad-based prime portfolio with potential for appreciation. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2008. The leases are mostly long term and guarantee a steady rental return. Part of the portfolio contains properties offering attractive appreciation potential offering over a medium-term investment horizon. Choy-Soon Chua, Managing Director for real estate acquisitions at SEB Asset Management, said "The Quartier Potsdamer Platz portfolio will make a significant strategic contribution to the SEB funds' earnings potential thanks to proactive asset and property management such as restructuring and new lets."
Source: SEB
