Major Baltic developer E.L.L. Real Estate has sold to Focus Nordic Cities an office property in Riga for 33 MEUR
Major Baltic developer E.L.L. Real Estate has sold to German open-ended real estate mutual fund Focus Nordic Cities managed by Catella Real Estate KAG, Munich, Germany, the office property in Riga let to such good quality tenants like Statoil, Samsung, Ericsson, and E.L.L. Real Estate Latvian office. The Property is located in Riga at Duntes Street which is a continuation of one of the main streets in Riga.
The Property has 12,851 square meters of lettable area and was developed in co-operation between E.L.L. Real Estate Latvian subsidiary and SIA Merks, which is a daughter company of the largest construction company in the Baltics – Merko Ehitus Ltd. (www.merko.ee). During last 1.5 years „Duntes offices” has already received a couple of architectural prizes and in spring 2008 was chosen as a best office building in Latvia.
According to Aldo Dapon, a CEO of E.L.L. Real Estate, Duntes office building (www.duntes.lv) was the first large-scale office development project for E.L.L. Real Estate in Latvia. “We are satisfied with the whole process of development and realization of this project. The fact that investors like Catella are interested to acquire the project shows that despite the contradictional times in our real-estate markets, there is an existing interest regarding good-quality projects,” said Dapon.
“The transaction indicates continuing interest for good quality cash flow generating properties in the Baltics by foreign institutional investors. It stabilizes the real estate market and opens opportunities to allocate funds for further development by well established developers. This is likely to be the trend for the upcoming years – perhaps less real estate transactions, but more transactions by large institutional investors. Catella is proud to advise large and reputable developers like E.L.L. Real Estate in successfully reaching their objectives,” says Pauls Platais, Partner of Catella Corporate Finance.
“Institutional investors require good quality properties with stable cash flow from good quality tenants”, says Florian van der Leeden of Catella Real Estate KAG (www.catella-realestate.de).
E.L.L. Real Estate (www.ell-realestate.com) is a real estate development company based on Estonian capital, which started its activities in 1997 and operates in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In Latvia the largest property developed by E.L.L. Real Estate is Spice shopping centre (www.spice.lv) located at Lielirbes street in Riga. Among the largest objects being developed are the shopping and entertainment centre Panorama (www.panorama.lt) in Vilnius (rental area ca. 52,000 m², date of completion: November 2008) and 14-storey office building Delta Plaza (www.deltaplaza.ee) at Pärnu mnt 141 in Tallinn (rental area ca. 11,500 m², date of completion: December 2008).