Karlin Real Estate has acquired from Glanmore Fund Advisors, Worldwide House, a fully occupied 169,931-square-foot office building in Peterborough, UK in a transaction valued at £16 million ($24.6 million US).
The acquisition marks the entry into the European commercial real estate market by Karlin Real Estate a subsidiary of Karlin Asset Management, the Los Angeles-based investment firm with more than $1.5 billion in unleveraged capital. “The current European real estate market closely parallels what we saw in the U.S. a few years ago,” said David A. Cohen, Karlin Asset Management’s CEO. “Valuations are being affected by the lack of financing, particularly in the secondary markets, which is similar to what we experienced in the U.S. This has created a window of opportunity for us to invest up to $1 billion in select institutional quality assets in the UK and other key European markets at a very compelling basis.”
Worldwide House is a four-story building constructed in 1975 and renovated in 1996. It is located in Thorpe Wood Business Park, in Peterborough, a growing satellite city of London. Worldwide House is currently 100 percent leased through 2021 to Travelex Limited, the world’s largest non-bank foreign exchange business, which trades in more than 80 currencies in 50 countries around the globe.
“We are thrilled to be adding Travelex to our roster of institutional quality tenants,” said Matthew Schwab, Karlin Real Estate’s Managing Director. “They have a great business model and we hope to expand our relationship with them in the near future.”
Karlin’s U.S. real estate business consists of a portfolio of more than five million square feet of office, multifamily, retail and industrial assets as well as 297 acres of raw land in Austin, TX that is being developed as a master planned technology and office park. Karlin also has a bridge real estate lending platform that has deployed more than $300 million in debt financing.