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Investment activity in Russian commercial real estate market retains

Moscow, 3 February 2016, - According to the latest investment report by global property advisor CBRE, despite the economic turmoil, the interest to commercial real estate is still high, both from the Russian and foreign investors. The main driver for investors now is the potential of asset value recovery on the back of market correction.

Key indicators in 2015:

• The investment into real estate assets was down by 36% YoY in US dollar terms and amounted to USD2.8 bn. However, the investment volume in ruble terms was the same as in 2014 and amounted to RUB168 bn.
• The re-pricing is happening because of FX market volatility, structural change of leasing income, and high cost of debt. 
• Investors have several strategies now, the purchase of quality income producing assets or assets with leasing income upside. At the same time, investors are particularly interested in assets with high debt burden, if there are prospect for debt optimization or owner’s strategic decision to sell at the current level.

The investment market in 2015 was as liquid as in 2014, with the same number of deals, because of ruble devaluation the average investment deal size declined to USD55 m from USD85 m. 

Foreign investment share declined to 15% in 2015 from 33% in 2014. Regional investments amount to a mere USD58.7 mln, or about 2% of the total 2015 volume, reflecting the investor interest to Moscow.

Offices continued to be the investor priorities, with 38% of 2015 volume. Key transactions are the sales of Metropolis business centre, bld. 1 and 3, Avrora business centre and Zarechiye business centre.

The investors’ demand for shopping centres and warehouses in 2015 took 25% and 18% of the total volume accordingly. Among the largest deals in these segments were the purchase of Fashion Season Gallery and PNK Chekhov I logistic complex.

11% of the total volume was invested into hotels. The key contributors to this were the sale of Four Seasons Hotel Moscow and Sheraton Palace hotel.

Despite the uncertainty on the market, investors see the benefits of investing at market bottom and advantage over other asset types in the form of value retention in the long term. As the current oil price level is prohibitive for its producers, we expect the situation to change and stabilization on real estate investment market to start during H1 2016.

Olesya Dzuba, Director, Strategic Analysis and Planning Department CBRE in Russia:

“High investor interest to commercial real estate is demonstrated by the deal volume in negotiation stage. Notably, the interest is presented not only by Russian capital that has been dominating on investment market recently, but also by the interest of foreign investors, including Asian and Middle Eastern, which has not realized yet. Taking into account the amount of deals that have been postponed from 2015 to 2016 and high investor interest, we forecast 30% real estate investment growth in ruble terms in 2016, with the investment volume in dollar terms remaining at the 2015 level”.