HIH's Düsseldorf club deal leaves a family inside the trade

HIH Invest has acquired the Dreischeibenhaus in Düsseldorf alongside institutional investors through a club deal, buying the landmark from the Schwarz-Schütte family, which retains an interest in the investment structure. The purchase price was not disclosed, which keeps a rare German CBD trade out of the comp set at exactly the moment the market could use the print.

The property covers roughly 347,000 square feet in Düsseldorf's central business district, about 321,000 of it office, with restaurant, storage and archive space and 276 parking spaces rounding out the rest. Built in 1960, extensively revitalized in 2014 and LEED Gold certified, it is twelve years past that renovation: long enough that the next owner's capital plan has to look toward a second round of works, short enough that nothing forces the issue this year.

What carries the deal is the rent roll. The building is nearly fully leased, and the tenant mix — Hogan Lovells, Gleiss Lutz, DLA Piper, A&O Shearman, Kearney, JLL and LGT Bank — is a professional-services roster, which is about as strong a lease covenant profile as a European CBD tower can assemble without a government in it. DLA Piper is the name that connects this trade to our own coverage: within three weeks of the Düsseldorf purchase, the firm committed to two full floors at 1251 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown at $140 to $150 a square foot. A tenant paying Midtown trophy rents and holding German space is not a tenant engineering an exit from either. The archive's other recent office story points the same direction — Havas Health's fifteen-year renewal at 200 Madison gave that building's owner the income visibility a landlord needs before taking a refinancing to market, and a nearly full Düsseldorf tower does the same job for HIH's club.

The telling detail is the seller's retained interest: a family that sells a landmark outright and one that sells while staying inside the structure are publishing different views of price, and the second is the harder position to hold. Staying in means the bid for the whole asset did not match the ask, and the Schwarz-Schüttes chose continued exposure over a discount. A club deal is the structure that makes that work: institutional capital takes the bulk of the equity while the family keeps a slice of the upside without carrying single-asset risk on its own balance sheet.

The office clearing trade is broadening, with trophy towers releveraging at premiums while commodity stock heads toward conversion. Dreischeibenhaus sits firmly on the trophy side of that line — CBD, LEED Gold, near-full occupancy, seven named tenants. That retained interest is the encouraging outcome for anyone holding German CBD assets, and it should give buyers still waiting for bids to fall reason to reconsider. If the price ever surfaces, Düsseldorf has its benchmark for the next landmark to trade. Until then, the building's case rests where it should: on whether DLA Piper, Gleiss Lutz and the rest of that roster are still signing leases at the next event.