Modular developer SEMODU announced plans to set up residential real estate funds targeted at semi-professional and institutional invest under a new division, SEMODU Institutional.
The company, listed since August last year on the Munich stock exchange, aims to provide investors direct access to its own high-dividend, ESG-compliant project developments, with the goal of locking in more value across the entire value chain.
SEMODU says it will structure its own project developments as open-ended Spezialfonds under KAGB rules, and manage them themselves, giving institutional investors access to mixed-use real estate portfolios. The initial focus will be on proprietary projects in southern Germany.
Benedict Heidbüchel, Head of Investor Relations and Asset Management at SEMODU, said: "Our modular designs combine an above-average level of cost certainty with the highest quality standards, enabling institutional investors to leverage value and achieve positive results despite persistently challenging market conditions and an extremely restrictive financing environment."
The company, headquartered in Munich, has been on a hiring spree, beefing up its top management to handle a project development pipeline of between €400m and €500m. CEO and founder Frank Talmon l'Armee describes SEMODU's business as "developing building models and new methods for controlling buildings on the basis of software solutions and complex mathematical systems." The goal is to use this approach to build affordable and sustainable buildings.
Talmon l'Armee has long been an evangelist for serial and modular construction as a driver of more efficient planning, while integrating green technologies and sustainable materials. Modular construction can generate savings of 27% on raw materials, compared with comparable conventional building, he says. "In an optimised module, for example, slimmer walls, thinner columns and more filigree supply shafts can be built." A major advantage, at a time when building costs are soaring and project developments are being cancelled wholesale.
Talmon l'Armee does not claim that modular construction is cheaper than conventional building - in fact, in some cases it can be more expensive. But all told, it IS generally more economical, he argues, due to the reduced use of materials and labour, as well as a shorter capital commitment and construction time.
A permanent bugbear is Germany's complicated building law - a real obstacle to a greater take-up of modular building, says Talmon l'Armee. We could learn a lot by studying how they do these things in the Netherlands and Japan, he says.
