Bouwinvest doubles down on Australian real estate despite pandemic

Australia may still be off bounds for international tourists, but it has not closed its borders to cross-border real estate investors, a panel held recently by PERE on the state of the Australian property market concluded. Bouwinvest’s Director for Asia-Pacific Investments, Tjarko Edzes, participated in the panel, and confirmed the group has also remained active there during the pandemic.

Following a recent investment in the local disability housing sector, Bouwinvest has now co-invested in the development of a hyperscale data centre in Sydney, with developer/operator Equinix, a global leader in this field, and PGIM Real Estate. The group is also close to finalising a value-add strategy in the country.

Tjarko Edzes said: “We are longstanding investors in the residential sector in its various forms and particularly like the positive societal and environmental contribution we are delivering through the investment in the disability housing sector, which we will look to expand in the next few years.

Now we have also closed an investment in a hyperscale data centre, which we see as an attractive segment given the significant demand drivers and high barriers to entry, while these essentially provide critical infrastructure for economies and societies. Moreover, the recent restrictions due to the pandemic have only worked as a catalyst for the ongoing megatrend of increased demand from the strong growth of online data traffic, computing and storage. Our investment is fully seeded with an inner-city and strategically located development site, that has all necessary permits and services. We also like the fact that Equinix is a global leader in data centre sustainability, and look forward to continue our investment partnership with PGIM Real Estate.”

Bouwinvest was also able to continue investing, because its Asia-Pacific office is located in Sydney. “It has been very good to be based here during the pandemic. And we see more groups indeed opening an office here either for their regional office or just for Australia. With the delayed but eventually strong roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccination program, we believe Australia is well placed in the years ahead”.

Read the full PERE article here.