The miner market is in a scramble that opens the door for foreign investors

Most of them subsequently fell on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, and are now completely absent from the buyer’s side.

– They had access to cheap money, but now have to look more closely at their balance sheet and maybe be more market-oriented and want to sell a little bit, says Tomas Ramsilovic, director of analysis at DNB Næringsmegling.

Many Swedish companies have used a lot of hybrid capital and several layers of debt capital, so they may have been more effective than what can be read from the annual reports, Berkedal adds.

But even if the Swedes are watching the field and the Norwegian investors are more or less willingly sitting on the fence, other stakeholders are reporting – stakeholders who were previously played on the sidelines because of swipes in the Norwegian market.

Last year, commercial real estate was sold for around NOK 8.5 billion to foreign (non-Swedish) investors. According to DNB Næringsmegling, this is the highest amount since 2018, although overall volume is down 45 percent from 2021.

– We talk to quite a few foreigners a day. Many of them have good access to capital, and are looking for larger investments – often €100m or more. Berkedal says we’re talking about both private capital and institutional capital like pension funds.

Foreign investors often spend a great deal of time getting to know the context surrounding a property. They may spend two to three months investigating before making an offer, he continues.

Does the weak exchange rate of the krone have much to say in terms of interest?

– This forms parts of it. Plus an interest rate level that is more in line with the rest of Europe makes currency hedging affordable. Foreign real estate investors primarily want exposure to the property and not currency fluctuations. All other things being equal, Norwegian real estate is more attractive now than it was in the past, says Jens Peter Guthus, CEO of DNB Næringsmegling.

You will buy more in Norway

Just before Christmas last year, the so-called KPMG building in Majorstuen in Oslo was sold from Entra to Finnish PE company CapMan for NOK 1.9 billion. Investment manager Andreas Wang says in an email that Norway is one of the company’s core areas and that the company will be buying more.

– Is the exchange rate an important factor in such an evaluation?

– no.

– Do you think that more property owners will end up in a credit crunch and therefore have to get rid of their properties?

– There may be a risk that this will happen. Wang replies that it depends more on banks and bondholders than on potential reductions in property values.

He believes that the biggest problem in the market now is that interest rates in the market fluctuate so much that it becomes difficult to predict what the rates will be in one to three years.

Without transactions, price clearance becomes very theoretical, says the CapMan manager.

Is there a big gap between buyer and seller price expectations?

– There is a varying gap but at the same time you can see that there are movements in the market. This always happens when market changes indicate a negative trend.