Rental funds collect shareholders – Newspaper Kommersant No. 205 (7406) dated 11/07/2022

The past quarter was successful for retail closed-end investment funds of rental real estate. The volume of assets under their management increased by 36%, to 68.6 billion rubles. Investors are attracted by the protective properties of the instrument, which generates cash flow even in the current crisis conditions. New management companies are also exploring the launch of such funds, although most of them focus on closed-end mutual funds for qualified investors, which have fewer regulatory restrictions.

The third quarter of 2022 turned out to be successful for management companies in terms of raising funds from investors in retail closed-end mutual funds specializing in commercial real estate. According to the management company Accent Capital, the assets of such funds increased during the reporting period by 18.3 billion rubles, to 68.6 billion rubles. This is 7.7 billion rubles. higher than the attraction for the first half of this year and by 2.6 billion rubles. more than in all of 2021. To date, 25 such closed-end mutual funds operate on the market.

However, most of the growth came from the funds of Modern Real Estate Funds (SFN), whose total assets grew by 65.8% over the quarter, to RUB 45.4 billion.

According to the head of the company’s retail business development Ruslan Nadrov, the clients most actively invested in the real estate closed-end investment fund Sovremenny Rent Business 7. In other management companies, assets grew by up to 3.2%, which was largely due to portfolio revaluation. “Squeezing both the overall investment demand in the market and the investment period limits the demand potential in this segment of investment products that are long in nature,” Andrey Bogdanov, director of alternative investments at Alfa Capital Management Company, notes.

Nevertheless, interest in this segment is supported by the positive results of managing such funds since the beginning of the year. According to Mr. Nadrov, in the third quarter of the SFN Management Company paid over 2.5 billion rubles to fund shareholders, since the beginning of the year – more than 6.6 billion rubles.

“In all our funds, stable payments remain and, moreover, there is a steady upward trend, based on an inflationary rise in turnover in stores with a discount product offer, characterized by inelastic demand for their trade nomenclature,” Andrey Bogdanov notes.

According to him, on the horizon of the year, “rental dividends” of real estate funds, depending on the sector, may amount to 7-12%, in addition to which high-quality properties with built-in indexation of rental rates may increase in value by 4-5%.

This is higher than the current rates on deposits of large banks (according to the Central Bank, in October it was 6.8% per annum), and is also comparable to OFZ rates (yield on medium-term issues was 7.5–9% per annum). According to the head of analytics and research at Accent Capital, Elena Mikhailova, real estate in a crisis is a protective asset along with currency and precious metals. But under the sanctions, the dollar and the euro have become “toxic currencies”, interest in which has declined sharply. In addition, “all important real estate contracts are long-term and inflation-adjusted,” says Ms. Mikhailova. According to Vitaliy Balanovich, CEO of Balance Asset Management Management Company, investing in a real estate mutual fund is more attractive for an investor than a direct purchase of real estate, since such a product is a diversified portfolio of various real estate objects.

However, targeting funds to unqualified investors has certain limitations. According to Alexey Sivyakov, a member of the board of directors of the Parus Asset Management Management Company, objects of institutional quality worth from 2 billion rubles. difficult to acquire without the use of credit resources, which is available only in the case of funds for qualified investors. Raising such an amount among private investors is not a trivial task even for large management companies, he notes.

Therefore, several new market participants are planning to enter the segment of funds for unqualified investors – Ingosstrakh-Investments, Balance Asset Management (including jointly with Samolet Group), Tinkoff Capital (similar to the Tinkoff ZhK Republic fund – REDS” with other developers). SFN Management Company is planning to expand its range by adding closed-end mutual funds for qualified investors.

Vitaly Gaidaev