Patrizia and Garbe have begun sounding out investor interest prior to inviting bids for a circa €450 mln portfolio in Germany.

And in Spain, CBRE Global Investors and Montepino are planning a circa €400 mln sale that had been mooted before the pandemic lockdown, after appointing CBRE and Morgan Stanley to run the process.

Last week PropertyEU reported that there is unlikely to be a ‘summer lull’ in the logistics investment market this year, with sellers confident that the next six months will be a good time to transact.

James Chapman, Cushman & Wakefield international partner in EMEA capital markets, said he believed volumes for the logistics and industrial sector could finish at similar levels to last year, in the region of €30 bn.

Oli Fraser-Looen, head of omni-channel retail investment at Savills, told PropertyEU: ‘Many sellers are going to want to launch by August at the latest if they want the liquidity by the end of the year.’

The German portfolio coming to market comprises 14 assets which one adviser described as ‘good assets in good markets; not super trophy, but very strong. That will be a very well bid portfolio’.

The properties are held in a fund launched several years ago by Garbe with Triuva. Triuva was taken over by Patrizia in 2017. CBRE has been mandated on the sale.

The Spanish portfolio has been assembled over the last three years via development, and is a mix of income-producing and nearly completed buildings as well as land for development. Most assets are in the greater Madrid area with two in Zaragoza.

The sale is an equity recapitalisation, with Montepino continuing as developer and CBRE GI’s Europe Value Partners 2 fund selling its interest. Inditex is among the tenants.

Eastdil Secured’s Eric Jansen, who heads up European logistics for the firm, said occupier demand for logistics was getting even stronger and continues to drive investor demand.

‘The US as always is a bit of a leading indicator and there is a massive crush of demand from onshoring and inventory management as well as e-commerce. This is likely to be even more the case in Europe, because of the steeper demand curve for e-commerce in terms of adoption. Essentially, that adoption moved forward five or six years in five to six weeks (due to the pandemic).

‘Everybody is seeing that. And in an environment where there’s over €200 bn of fresh powder raised for real estate, and most of those groups are not looking at hospitality or retail or a lot of the office that is not right down the fairway and very core, what you are left with is logistics.

‘So I think there’s a very compelling case that yields are going to be tighter than pre-Covid: because the fundamentals have held up and there is more capital chasing an even smaller pot of opportunities.’