We created Deutsche Annington, the largest private residential landlord in Germany
Deutsche Annington was created in 2001 when Terra Firma acquired 64,000 residential properties from the German Federal Railways. The company was set up to own, maintain and rent the properties and sell individual units to tenants and third parties. Through add-on acquisitions, Terra Firma tripled the size of the company, building the largest private residential landlord in Germany with nearly 180,000 owned units.
The housing had been owned and managed on a not-for-profit basis by ten separate companies. As a result, there was enormous scope for integration and efficiency savings and the professionalisation of an under-managed sector. It also provided the opportunity for people to buy their own homes through socially-responsible privatisation.
A platform was created to support the ten separate portfolios of assets and Deutsche Annington became an industry-leading platform for the management of its properties. It offered its customers a competitive range of properties with excellent service and strived to further improve service quality, customer focus and efficiency.
The owner occupancy rate in Germany was one of the lowest in Europe and Terra Firma believed that there was significant latent demand for home ownership in Germany. Deutsche Annington offered a tenant privatisation programme, giving tenants and third parties the opportunity to buy their own homes at affordable prices. Since 2002, more than 48,000 units were sold.
Further portfolio acquisitions enabled Deutsche Annington to replenish its portfolio and build a rental asset base that provided stable, recurring cash flows.
The Deutsche Annington investment has been fully realised. In 2006, Terra Firma raised €2.1 billion through TFDA in order to buy 82.5% of Deutsche Annington, along with a minority investor, from TFCPI. TFDA acquired 82.5%, with the balance being acquired by CPI. In 2013, Deutsche Annington completed an IPO and began trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange with a free float of 15.6%. In May 2014, with Terra Firma’s ownership of Deutsche Annington at 67.3%, TFDA distributed its Deutsche Annington shares on a pro rata basis to the TFDA investors.