Brookfield buys Potsdamer Platz portfolio
Frankfurt-based Savills Fund Management GmbH (formerly SEB Asset Management) has signed a purchase agreement with a subsidiary of Brookfield Property Partners for the Potsdamer Platz portfolio in Berlin, which comprises around 267,000 sqm of lettable space.
With this contract signing, one of the largest transactions in Germany since 2008 is about to be completed. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price. Brookfield prevailed in a structured international bidding process.
Potsdamer Platz in the middle of Berlin is one of the most prominent city districts in Europe and has won several awards for its architecture. More than 480 national and international companies - including Hubert Burda, TollCollect, Etihad Airways, China's largest bank ICBC, the group representative office of Daimler AG, Habitat as well as renowned law firms have settled here.
In addition to seven office buildings and five residential buildings, the portfolio of the mixed-use urban quarter includes the Potsdamer Platz Arkaden shopping center, various entertainment facilities such as the Cinemaxx cinema and Stage Theater, the Mandala Hotel, as well as around 30 restaurants and cafés and more than 2,000 parking spaces in the underground levels of Potsdamer Platz. The 103-meter high office tower "Potsdamer Platz 1" built by Berlin architect Prof. Hans Kollhoff is particularly well-known.
The properties have an occupancy rate of around 80 percent of the total space. The vacancy rate is largely concentrated in an office building under repositioning at Eichhornstrasse 3. The Atrium Tower, whose lobby with a light glass roof extends over seven storeys, is intended for use as a multi-tenant building of premium quality.
Already at the beginning of 2013, the Frankfurt real estate fund company, which has been part of the Savills Investment Management Group since September 2015 and operates under its new name Savills Fund Management GmbH, had sold the 5-star luxury hotel Grand Hyatt to a subsidiary of Al Faisal Holding from Qatar for more than 100 million euros.
The Potsdamer Platz Quartier, with a gross floor area of more than 550,000 sqm, was built by the Daimler Group in 1998 and acquired in 2008 by what is now Savills Fund Management GmbH for the SEB ImmoInvest mutual fund. (ah)
