Trei Real Estate (“Trei”), an international developer and asset manager, just published its mid-year figures for 2024: Despite a challenging environment, the company succeeded in implementing its strategy as planned. Trei’s assets under management (AuM) remained stable at 1.3 billion euros. Its development pipeline registered a 300-million-euro drop down to 1.7 billion euros. The dip is explained by the timely completion of several residential projects, including Lotsenhof and Fischerhof in Mainz, Germany, and multi-family projects in the United States, namely in Jacksonville/Florida and Nashville/Tennessee. In addition, Trei sold three apartment complexes in Berlin, Germany, that were completed between 2020 and 2022 at the sites of former single-storey supermarkets, and also disposed of a convenience centre in Murnau (Bavaria). That said, the transfer of the aforementioned project completions into the company’s proprietary holdings offset the disposals that reduced the AuM.
In order to continue its property development activities, Trei took out c. 150 million euros in debt funding during the first half of 2024. As a result, the company’s deb-to-equity ratio now equals 36 percent.
Pepijn Morshuis, the CEO of Trei Real Estate, elaborated: “Our mid-year figures for 2024 illustrate that we remain on track despite the challenging market conditions. The stable performance of our assets under management and the timely completion of our projects in Mainz and in the United States highlight our competence as property developer. We are particularly proud of our achievements in the United States. Demand for high-end rental apartments in the fast-growing regions of the south-eastern United States remains strong, and we are aware of serious potential for further projects.”
During the first half of 2024, Trei consolidated its strategic concentration on its core markets of Germany, Poland and the United States after selling off its portfolios in Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 2023. At the same time, the company has gradually shifted the focus of its residential projects to Poland and the United States. The development pipeline in Poland includes around 2,500 rental and ownership apartments, while about 2,000 rental apartments are under development in the south-eastern United States. In Germany, Trei is currently planning to develop 1,150 rental apartments. In Poland, the company also develops retail parks under the Vendo Park brand, with 15 of them currently in various stages of the planning approval and construction process.
Morshuis added: “Property developers in Germany need a lot of staying power, while planning certainty is very important for us in the current market environment. In Berlin, the municipal development planning process has an average time to approval of ten years – an issue we have never faced with our Polish and American projects. At this time, we still have six projects in the planning stage in Germany, namely in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Düsseldorf and Wiesbaden, but we have a hard time finding attractive opportunities to expand our development portfolio. Our chances are far better in Poland and in the United States, and so we will concentrate our activities primarily in these housing markets for the time being. In the United States, we are reviewing various investment opportunities for new projects and will approach potential joint venture partners in order to act on them.”