LOS ANGELES & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ares Management L.P. (NYSE:ARES) announced today that funds managed by its real estate group have completed two significant asset sales that bring the total completed transaction volume in Germany to approximately €1 billion over the past year. The first transaction is the sale of the 74,000-square-meter Kustermann Park office complex in Munich, Germany, to a pan-European fund manager. Specific terms were not disclosed. The second is the sale of a portfolio of 2,500 rental units (comprising of 2,453 multifamily units and 52 commercial units) in the North Rhine Westphalia, Southern Lower Saxony and Bremen, as well as the Schleswig-Holstein catchment area of Hamburg to a listed German residential aggregator for €130 million.
“This has been a very active period for us in Germany, where we have led significant acquisitions and dispositions across property types including office, retail and residential, in all of the major markets across the country,” said John Ruane, Partner in the Ares Real Estate Group. “We have been active participants in the German market for approximately 20 years and have developed relationships for sourcing and navigating complex transactions, scaling and managing institutional-quality portfolios—similar to what we have done in other European markets—and successfully exiting to the institutional market in a timely manner.”
Ares funds acquired Kustermann Park in October 2015, and since then completed a refurbishment program to upgrade common and external areas, implemented a successful leasing program to reduce vacancy to its approximately 3% level at the time of the sale, and improved the prevailing rents achieved on lettings from €14.5 per square meter per month at acquisition to €18 per square meter just prior to sale. In the past four years, Ares has announced several acquisitions in its Germany residential strategy, bringing total German multifamily assets to more than 260,000 square meters of space spread across more than 4,100 units.
Ares continues to add to its German portfolio with the recent acquisition of Zehlendorfer Welle (also known as “The Wave”), a 25,000-square-meter, mixed-use commercial asset located in Zehlendorf, one of Berlin’s most affluent districts.
About Ares Management, L.P.
Ares Management, L.P. is a publicly traded, leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $104 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2017 and more than 15 offices in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Since its inception in 1997, Ares has adhered to a disciplined investment philosophy that focuses on delivering strong risk-adjusted investment returns throughout market cycles. Ares believes each of its three distinct but complementary investment groups in Credit, Private Equity and Real Estate is a market leader based on assets under management and investment performance. Ares was built upon the fundamental principle that each group benefits from being part of the greater whole. For more information, visit www.aresmgmt.com.
