HIH Invest Real Estate (HIH Invest) just acquired an office building, located at Albert-Einstein-Strasse 2 in Osnabruck in the German state of Lower Saxony. Completed in 2014, the building is certified under the DGNB Platinum sustainability standard and provides a total lettable area of 3,222m2 on three full storeys. It also includes 90 car parking spots and five charging stations for electric vehicles, each with two charging points. A roof-mounted photovoltaic system provides almost the entire power that is consumed by the building.
It serves as the head office of pbr Planungsbüro Rohling AG (pbr AG), the company that sold the building and is leasing it back on a triple net lease with a 15-year term.
“The long-term lease with its two renewal options of five years each implies stable and inflation-indexed rental income for us. Back when pbr AG designed the building, it considered not only its own aspirations and requirements for a corporate headquarters but took such a far-sighted approach that the property is perfectly suitable for alternative types of use and would even lend itself to multi-tenant occupancy,” said Daniel Asmus, Team Head of Transaction Management Office Germany at HIH Invest.
The property was purchased for the Deutschland Selektiv Immobilien Invest II special AIF, which pursues an Article 8 investment strategy.
“The acquisition in Osnabrück illustrates the dormant potential in Germany’s Class C cities. The office market of the university city of Osnabrück has excellent fundamentals, most notably a low vacancy level and permanently pent-up demand. The construction activity in recent years has been demand-driven rather than speculative,” as Daniel Asmus went on to explain.
The purchased property is located in the Wohn- und Wissenschaftspark Osnabruck, a residential and science park in the Westerberg district of Osnabruck. It is home to the university and another higher education institution as well as to several innovative and technology-related companies. It is 10 minutes away from the central railway station and 30 minutes from the Munster-Osnabruck Airport.
The legal and fiscal pre-acquisition audit was performed by the law firm of Baker Tilly, while Drees & Sommer handled the technical due diligence. Lutgen Breiholdt Immobilien acted as an estate agency.
