Realterm Closes $109M European Logistics Fund

Brussels DHL facility. Image courtesy of Realterm

Realterm, a logistics real estate investment management firm, has closed Realterm Europe Logistics Fund at $109.3 million, or €100 million, to invest in high flow-through logistics assets in Western Europe. RELF is the ninth fund raised across the Realterm platform and its first value-add fund in Europe.

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The fund’s first acquisition is a 107,600-square-foot facility in Brussels, Belgium, that is fully leased to DHL. Located at the intersection of two key pan-European transportation corridors—E40 and E19—the property is an infill site with close proximity to Brussels Airport, the Benelux ports and a dense residential population.

Balazs Lados, managing director for Realterm Europe and the RELF fund manager, said in prepared remarks that the facility is suitable for a wide variety of operations, including air cargo, e-commerce fulfillment, regional distribution and last-mile delivery.

HFT properties typically include cross-dock truck terminals, transload and related trans-shipment, air cargo, parcel sortation, final-mile warehouses and other e-commerce backbone facilities. They are strategically located in and around major population centers, primary distribution hubs and along major pan-European freight corridors. HFT facilities are critical to the efficient flow of goods through the supply chain.

Lados told Commercial Property Executive the fund was sized to fund 12 to 18 months of acquisitions. “We expect this time frame compressing due to a dislocation in the market [caused by the Covid-19 outbreak]. We are accelerating our outreach and expect to deliver results once travel restrictions are lifted,” he said.

Lados said the fund will be targeting core Western European transportation advantaged markets with good access to infrastructure, a wide consumer base and labor force along major pan-European freight corridors in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

“We also have the capability to do UK, where we see a lot of assets and submarkets we like, but waiting on how Brexit and FX rate to the euro will play out,” he told CPE.

Realterm platforms

Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., in Annapolis, Md., the firm has more than $4.5 billion in assets under management and seven additional offices—Amsterdam, Montreal, Mumbai, Singapore, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles. Realterm manages three vertically-integrated investment platforms—Realterm Logistics, the largest owner of HFT logistics real estate in the U.S.; Aeroterm, the largest owner of on-airport cargo logistics real estate operating in North America, and IndoSpace Logistics Parks, the largest industrial development platform in India.

In January 2019, Realterm Logistics acquired the Elmsford Distribution Center in Elmsford, N.Y., a 386,000-square-foot warehouse/distribution complex from Mack-Cali Realty Corp. for about $70.3 million.