Fast-growing NAS Invest targeting €250m of AUM this year

The Berlin-heaquarterd NAS Invest, established two years ago, has managed to breach the €100m barrier of assets under management in this year's first quarter. The company said it aims to be managing more than €250m by the end of the year, focused on its semi-institutional core market of family offices and wealthy individuals.

The company said it now had about €80m of existing properties and €20m of project developments, mostly residential property in Berlin and the north-east of Germany, after selling €10m of assets in the quarter.

The company was established by Nikolai Dëus-von Homeyer, previously a director at Luxembourg-based opportunistic property investor Corestate Capital, and before that, like many who moved to Corestate, at US private equity group Cerberus.

NAS Invest plans to acquire stock with repositioning potential but is pulling back from pure greenfield developments in future, it said. The projects are funded with private money from high-net-worth individuals and family offices with NAS Invest normally participating as a co-investor.

CEO Dëus-von Homeyer said, "NAS Invest has its own roots in a Family Office, so we understand the needs of this investor class very well, and can provide them with tailor-made solutions. Our company's development over the past almost two years shows that we are on the right track; we reached our target of €100m assets under management much more quickly than we had anticipated."

NAS collaborates with Gibraltar-registered Blue Rock, an investment fund with more than €200m of assets under management. Blue Rock manage the investors through its regulated investment funds, while NAS Invest handles the whole property value chain, including acquisitions, developments, asset management and sales. As Dëus-von Homeyer puts it, “Thanks to our vast market network, we can find and develop asset values that our competitors are unaware of.”

The company's 'sweet spot' is assets priced between €2m and €20m. "Here there is less competition from potential buyers. It's where private investors often lack sufficient capital, while institutional investors are often pursuing bigger deals", said Dëus-von Homeyer.