GARBE Industrial Real Estate GmbH, one of the leading specialists for logistics and industrial properties in Germany, ended the year just concluded with a record performance. For one thing, the company completed around 1.2 billion euros worth of notarised transactions last year. By year-end 2019, Garbe had real estate and fund assets worth about 3.05 billion euros under management. The figure implies a year-on-year increase by almost 22 percent. The portfolio assets are distributed across four countries and held in currently six investment funds on different asset management and property management mandates. The gross lettable area totals 4.2 million sqm. The funds and accounts managed by Garbe generated an average time-weighted rate of return (BVI method) of well over ten percent in 2019, while the average dividend approximated six percent last year.
Christopher Garbe, Managing Director of GARBE Industrial Real Estate GmbH, said: “The handsome comprehensive income is the result of our holistic management approach of delivering an end-to-end service performance in-house that covers the entire property value chain. Our competencies range from core and core+ investments all the way to value-add and speculative developments.”
Jan Dietrich Hempel, Co-Managing Director of GARBE Industrial Real Estate GmbH and in charge of the asset management division, added: “Together with local sales and property management teams, we manage more than four million square metres of floor area. Last year, we were able to let around 500,000 sqm on new leases. Our teams have in-depth market know-how and expertise that we were able to exploit in the best interest of our clients.”
The property development unit looks back on a similarly robust performance. Here, Garbe is involved in about 30 different projects in Germany, the Netherlands and France at the moment. “The development pipeline in the logistics real estate sector currently adds up to a total of 1.2 billion euros, up from 0.9 billion euros at the end of 2018, and represents around 800,000 sqm of lettable area,” said Christopher Garbe, adding: “We spent last year grooming this and other divisions, specifically by reinforcing our workforce, and expanded our footprint in Southern and Eastern Germany.”
To achieve its growth targets, the logistics and industrial real estate specialist not only continued to built up its manpower but also implemented structural upgrades. In the course of the past year, the companies created around 20 new expert jobs in all of its divisions. This brought the number of employees up to a total of 110 by the end of 2019.
Going forward, GARBE Industrial Real Estate intends to keep growing with its integrated management platform. The company’s outlook for 2020 anticipates continued positive growth in its investment fund business. At the moment, preparations for the successor fund to the “GARBE Logistikimmobilien Fonds Plus” are under way, among other projects. “Our real estate platform is supposed to keep growing in future. To this end, we expanded our business activities to include the data centre segment. We also kicked off our first activities in Central and Eastern Europe. The basis for moving into this market is our operating performance, which we will keep improving continuously,” said Christopher Garbe.
