BrickVest, the London-based online real estate investment platform, announces the final closing of its first US deal, the $134.4m Hilton Hotel located on Chicago’s iconic Navy Pier offered through its partnership with ACRON AG, a leading Swiss-based real estate asset manager with a transaction volume of approximately CH1.7 billion.
The initial €15 million investment mandate was fully subscribed in less than four months, on BrickVest platform, and from ACRON’s investors pool, reflecting the high level of European investor demand for high quality US commercial property assets. The deal was made available through BrickVest’s AIFM liquidity platform, BrickVest Access, which is dedicated to HNWs and family offices.
The Navy Pier Hotel, which is currently under construction and due to open in the summer of 2019, boasts 222 rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the city, Lake Michigan and the Pier. It will boast America’s largest roof top bar and restaurant measuring 30,000 square feet and is the only hotel to be built on the Navy Pier, Chicago’s top landmark, which attracts over nine million tourists a year.
The Navy Pier was offered through Harvest Investment 8 (HV8), the latest in BrickVest’s range of thematic strategy Alternative Investment Funds (AIF) and the first to offer investors exposure to the US market. HV8 is the second partnership with ACRON.
Emmanuel Lumineau, CEO at BrickVest, commented: “The Navy Pier Hotel proved to be a hugely popular asset among investors looking to diversify their portfolios, obtain a high level of liquidity and benefit from the growth and strength of the US economy.
“Even so, the speed at which we reached a final close exceeded our expectations and this speaks volumes about the efficiency of BrickVest Access’s distribution capabilities and our position as the only online platform providing sophisticated investors in Europe access to high quality US commercial property opportunities. Through our close partnership with ACRON, we look forward to bringing new premium-grade investment opportunities to investors in the coming months.”
BrickVest’s Harvest Fund Series offer European professional investors cost-efficient and transparent access to real estate deals anchored by institutional assets and managed by alpha asset managers. Since 2015, Harvest Investment Fund series has launched eight funds and provided exposure to the capital structure of €2bn of deals. BrickVest’s Harvest Fund Series has so far produced two exits; HV1 achieved a 31% IRR for investors through exposure to a diversified portfolio of 23 German retail assets; HV2, which focused on Value-Add Office investment opportunities in Germany, generated a net return of 2.3x for its investors over 26 months.
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Melissa Williams