The CapMan Social Real Estate Fund (CMSRE), which specialises in public infrastructure real estate, is acquiring the Kristiansand police headquarters, which will be completed in 2023. The building covers 17,000 square meters on nine floors. The main tenants include the Norwegian Police, the Directorate of Civil Defence and the Norwegian Immigration Service. It is part of the Quadrum district, the newly developed center of Kristiansand. The strategic location at the intersection of rail, bus, ferry and road connections has also attracted numerous well-known companies in the surrounding office buildings, including Capgemini and KPMG. The seller is Norway's leading project developer Bane NOR Eiendom.
For the CapMan Social Real Estate Fund, which will be launched in 2024, it is the first property purchase in Norway. The fund volume thus rises to more than 250 million euros. The fund invests in high-quality and sustainable social infrastructure real estate in Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. This emerging market segment is characterized by established structures and diverse opportunities. CapMan is the leading asset manager in the Nordic markets with total assets under management of €7.1 billion, of which €4.4 billion is in the real estate sector.
"Due to economic constraints, many cities and municipalities are looking for long-term and sustainability-oriented investors with ESG expertise," says Robert Feldt, fund director of the CMSRE. "Purchase prices have reached their lowest point – an optimal time for corresponding investments. The rapid growth of our fund underlines this dynamic development. The central location, the focus on important public functions, the extraordinarily good transport connections and the long-term, inflation-linked lease make the police headquarters an ideal property for our fund." Kristiansand is characterized by ferry connections to Denmark and a direct highway connection to Oslo, among other things.
Long-term secured earnings
Long-term secured rental income makes public infrastructure real estate an attractive investment not only for investors from the Nordic countries. Bane NOR Eiendom also attached great importance to environmentally friendly aspects during the development of the police headquarters. These include the use of sustainable materials and energy-efficient solutions. The building currently has an EPC-B rating, and the aim is to upgrade to EPC-A. EPC stands for Energy Performance Certificate and was introduced by the European Union to create a cross-border assessment of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of buildings. B is the second-best grade.
