Cording Real Estate Group and Warburg-HIH Invest have acquired an office property in Amsterdam as the latest asset for their €300 mln Benelux real estate fund, launched at the end of 2016.
The Delphi building is located at 135-139 Wibautstraat in the east of the Dutch capital. Built in 1964 and fully refurbished in 1994, the property has a lettable area of 7,560 m2. It is fully let to 10 different tenants, including Vodafone, Scalehub, Colourful Rebel and the Van der Hoeden Mulder legal practice.
The vendors were private investors and the financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
Delphi is situated close to the Amstel railway station, a major transport hub with bus, tram and underground connections. It also has good road access. The area around the station is to be remodelled in the next few years. This will include construction of a hotel and other buildings with numerous apartments, retail accommodation, offices and leisure facilities.
René de Heus, Cording's director of investment for the Benelux, commented: 'With this transaction, in a short period we have acquired a third property for the Benelux Commercial Real Estate Fund. This acquisition yet again underlines our competence in identifying and purchasing interesting investment properties in an intensely competitive market.'
Houthoff Buruma advised the purchaser on the legal due diligence, Stevens van Dijck on technical matters, Hofstede on environmental issues and Meijburg & Co on taxation.
New fund
Headquartered in London, Cording is an owner-managed Northern European real estate business, which provides fully-integrated services covering investment management, asset management and property management. Cording targets the UK, Germany and Benelux, and has around €2.4 bn of management mandates.
Warburg-HIH Invest Real Estate, owned by HIH Real Estate and private bank M.M.Warburg, is headquartered in Germany and has some €6 bn of assets under management.
Cording and Warburg-HIH established the open-end special real estate fund, Benelux Commercial Real Estate Fund, in December 2016 on behalf of Helaba Invest and another institutional investor.
The fund invests in office and retail property in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Its first two assets were the office property De Nieuwe Boompjes in the centre of the port city of Rotterdam and the Van Bylandt Huis in The Hague.
The fund has a gross target volume of €300 mln, including around €200 mln of equity. The planned investment period is two years.
Photo Delphi, Amsterdam (credit: Cording Real Estate)
