AURELIUS to invest EUR 400 Million in Value-Add Real Estate

AURELIUS Real Estate Opportunities (AREO), the Luxembourg-based real estate arm of the AURELIUS Group, intends to invest approximately EUR 400 million in properties with value-added potential over the next three years. The company is advised on its property acquisitions and management in Germany by AUREPA Advisors AG on an exclusive investment management and asset management mandate. Outside Germany, AURELIUS Advisors based in Luxembourg and London advises AREO in the same role as exclusive service provider. The capital commitments are the result of fundraising among European family office investors.

The acquisition profile of AREO includes residential and commercial real estate, specifically properties of the opportunistic and value-add categories. It concentrates on primary and secondary locations in metropolises and in growing B- and C-class cities. Investments in commercial real estate focus on the types light industrial, office, and medical centres. Also prioritised are investments in special types of use, such as commercial multi-use, multi-tenant properties in corporate real estate and senior-living real estate. Initial acquisitions in the mid-double-digit millions of euros have already been notarised. Further assets are waiting in a well-filled acquisition pipeline.

Hannes Eckstein, founding partner of the AURELIUS real estate group, commented: “We are aware of excellent investment opportunities in properties with value-added potential in the current market environment. Especially in the office and light industrial segments, many assets—often mispriced—require stronger repositioning now and in future, and this may go as far as the conversion to a different type of use. Our fast and flexible transaction and manage-to-core approach is quite successful in identifying such opportunities and putting them back on the market at a profit.” Acquisition structures eligible under the group-wide strategy of AURELIUS include the use of hybrid capital and joint ventures.

Jan Rehbock, the other founding partner of the AURELIUS real estate group, added: “Our management competence, which extends to a selected number of European countries, enables us to handle any kind of ownership structure. Once we repositioned a given asset, we decide on a case-to-case basis whether to retain it in our portfolio or to offer it to interested buyers, especially institutional ones.”

Jan Rehbock joined AURELIUS in 2007, and has served in a variety of senior positions in a number of group companies since then. Previous career stops of Hannes Eckstein include PATRIZIA Immobilien AG where he served as Head of Acquisition and Sales, among other roles.

Photo: Markus Püttmann and Petra Brüninghaus