JLL has won the mandate to market the 12 assets in the German Retail Income Fund (GRIF), which is coming to the end of its life.

The portfolio was one of a string of retail investments across Europe prepared for sale ahead of the property industry’s annual gathering at Mipim (13-16 March).

GRIF, a spezialfonds launched in 2010, owns retail warehouse parks, hypermarkets and neighbourhood centres across Germany. Its assets, many anchored by hypermarket Real, are in locations including Düsseldorf, Forchheim, Karlsruhe, Koln-Hurth, Norden Nersingen and Papenburg.

Agents say that demand for retail warehouse schemes, especially anchored by supermarkets, remains high from German and international investors. Last year, transaction volume in this sector in Germany was €2.8 bn, according to JLL, but few large portfolios have come to the market.

One, at the end of 2017, was a sale by Rockspring, advised by CBRE, of three parks in GrossGerau, Leipzig and Hamburg and two hypermarkets in Frankfurt and Weimar. The assets, sold by two of Rockspring’s TransEuropean funds, were bought by TH Real Estate. As well as selling, TH Real Estate is buying German retail parks again for two mandates: a follow-on fund to GRIF called the Core German Retail Fund; and a €250 mln segregated account for a German insurance company.

Yields for retail warehousing with long leases and strong tenants fell last year to between 4.6-5.3%. Agents believe 2018 could be a record year for retail investment sales generally and while some sellers may be shedding retail assets to lower their allocations to the sector, there has been no shortage of buyers.

Significant recent transactions include: Blackstone’s €750 mln sale of three Portuguese centres to Auchan and Merlin; a BNP Paribas REIM fund’s €250 mln acquisition of 47 Italian hypermarkets/supermarkets; and Meyer Bergman’s €300 mln sale of Galeria Katowicka.

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This article first appeared in EuroProperty, a PropertyEU weekly publication