In spite of the worldwide pandemic, LLB Immo KAG continued to be highly successful in 2020. The four funds under management focus on office and commercial properties in the core markets Austria and Germany. A total of some 100 commercial leases covering a leased space of more than 120,000 m² were either newly concluded or extended in the past year.

The success in Austria is owed, among other things, to the long-term lease of more than 800 m² in a shopping centre in Knittelfeld (Styria) to a drugstore and to the extension of a lease for a logistics property in Upper Austria comprising some 24,000 m². In Germany, the company concluded a long-term lease for a 1,400 m² office space with a lessee of excellent credit standing working in the field of medical engineering and extended the lease with a lessee operating in logistics for some 10,000 m², both transactions in the greater Düsseldorf area.

As at the end of 2020, the asset managers of the publicly offered open-ended LLB Semper Real Estate fund – LLB Immo KAG’s flagship – achieved an above average occupancy rate of 96.7 %. At the same time, the remaining terms of all other leases were successfully extended to over nine years. This key indicator now significantly exceeds the market average.

“The past year showed us once more how important it is to maintain an open-minded dialogue with our lessees”, says Michael Schoppe, managing director of LLB Immo KAG. Already at the beginning of the corona crisis, the fund’s asset management contacted its contractual partners to jointly work out sustainable solutions for the upcoming challenges. For example, strongly affected lessees were offered deferments and reductions of lease payments in exchange for contract renewals. “We meet our lessees on a peer-to-peer level. This is why we decided to focus on the mid- and long-term opportunities arising from collaboration in order to achieve the best possible outcome for all the parties concerned. Specifically, this means that while we support our lessees in these difficult times, we also ensure long-term cashflow in the individual funds for the benefit of our investors.”

The network of local contacts and the direct relationships with contractual partners did not come about by chance: LLB Immo KAG has been continuously expanding its asset management unit. Managing director Michael Schoppe can rely on team leader Stephan Karlas and asset managers Philipp Puhr and Johannes Neunteufl for help in managing a real estate portfolio in Austria and Germany which so far comprises some 80 properties with some 670,000 m². The outlook for 2021 is also optimistic: “Based on last year’s experience, we are confident that we will be able to maintain this successful course also in 2021”, says Michael Schoppe.