Blackstone is bolstering its rapidly expanding multi-let industrial portfolio with the acquisition of two multi-let industrial portfolios totaling £168m.
It has acquired the Column portfolio from M7 Real Estate for £107.7m. The granular 50-asset collection totals 2.5m sq ft and the price paid reflects a yield of around 7%.
The portfolio comprises a total of 350 different occupiers with 45% of the portfolio located in England, 35% in Wales and 20% in Scotland.
The portfolio was due to form the bulk of the seed assets for M7’s proposed £300m M7 Multi-Let REIT last year, at which time it had been largely owned by a Goldman Sachs and M7 joint venture known as Marble.
However, M7 decided to pull the prospective IPO and internalised the portfolio, buying it on to its own balance sheet.
Blackstone has also agreed a deal to buy a portfolio of eight multi-let warehouses from Commercial Estates Group. The private equity firm has agreed to pay close to £60m, which reflects a yield of around 6.4%.
Both portfolios will be managed for Blackstone by M7.
Blackstone’s multi-let industrial portfolio, known internally at M7 as Onyx, now has around €3.5bn of assets under management.
In an interview with EG in May, Blackstone’s head of European real estate, James Seppala, said: “When we looked through performance across our warehouse portfolio we saw there were tangential opportunities on smaller, more in-fill, urban assets that had been overlooked.
“It’s a more difficult asset class to scale and underwrite across Europe efficiently as ownership can be quite disparate.
“It is possible that that will become a platform we ultimately manage, brand and potentially in time exit as one.”
Knight Frank advised on the Column portfolio. DTRE is advising Blackstone on the acquisition of the CEG portfolio and the seller is being advised by Savills.
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