1. Denmark: Core rebrands 14 Zleep hotels as Marriotts
Denmark-based third-party hotel management company Core Hospitality struck a deal with Marriott International to convert its entire Danish portfolio of Zleep Hotels properties to Four Points Flex by Sheraton.
The Marriott deal makes Core the largest Marriott franchisee in the Nordics. The first batch of those hotels will be rebranded in December, with the remainder following suit early in 2025.
2. UK: Tesco Pension Fund lines up Cambridge science campus sale
Tesco Pension Fund is selling the home of life sciences group Abcam at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus to its tenant for around £125 million, or a 4.5% yield, CoStar News understands, in the largest transaction in the South East and East of England in the third quarter.
The Cambridge Biomedical Campus's developers, Liberty Property Trust and Countryside Properties, agreed to an 108,000-square-foot prelet with Abcam in 2022 at the same time as securing forward funding from Tesco Pension Fund. The ultimate buyer is understood to be Danaher, which recently bought Abcam.
3. France: IWG expands in Paris area with its HQ brand site
IWG opened a new Paris area site under the HQ brand in Noisy-le-Grand on Tuesday in the Le Piazza office building at 201 rue de la Piazza.
The building, sold last year by the PPG Croissance fund, managed by Pierre Premier Gestion, is now owned by Serris REIM and another undisclosed investor. This new space, adjacent to the Les Arcades shopping center, is designed to accommodate local SMEs. With a surface area of 1,321 square meters, it offers between 159 and 242 workstations.
4. Germany: Berlin logistics turnover more stable, but new construction falls
In the first nine months of 2024, Berlin's take-up of industrial and logistics real estate was between about 218,000 and 224,000 square meters, down from the previous year's level by about 4 percent to 8 percent depending on the analysis.
At the end of the third quarter, the prime rent was stable compared to the previous quarter in a range between 7.90 euros and 8.25 euros per square meter per month. The market was characterized by small-scale deals, and only 16% of take-up since the beginning of the year has been achieved with new buildings, based on the quarterly analyses of brokerages CBRE and Colliers.
5. Canada: Condo listings sour ahead of expected jump in demand
Canadian condominium sellers are putting more of their homes on the market, presenting new buying opportunities to aspiring owners, according to residential brokerage Re/Max.
The 2024 Re/Max Canada Condominium Report looked at condominium activity between January and August in Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, the city of Calgary, Edmonton, Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa and the Halifax Regional Municipality, and said it "found that condo listings have soared in anticipation of increased demand in the fourth quarter of 2024 and early 2025."
6. US: Walgreens to shut 1,200 stores as it joins other pharmacy chains slashing their footprints
Pharmacy giant Walgreens Boots Alliance plans to close about 1,200 underperforming U.S. stores, including around 500 over the next year, as it joins other drug store chains and retailers downsizing their fleets to create more profitable brick-and-mortar footprints.
The Deerfield, Illinois-based healthcare company said on Tuesday it was accelerating its plans to downsize its store fleet, with the initial 1,200 shutterings planned for the next three years. Walgreens officials are also evaluating if they should close an additional 800 stores they've been monitoring. About 6,000 of the company's 8,000 U.S. stores are profitable, according to CEO Tim Wentworth.
This report was compiled from CoStar’s news publications in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany.