Housing investor SATO has increased its rental housing stock by nearly 1,000 apartments through a transaction with the OP-Rental Yield Fund. The deal includes 16 residential buildings located in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Turku, Tampere, Oulu, and Jyväskylä.
Following the acquisition, SATO now owns approximately 27,000 rental apartments, which are home to around 46,000 residents. The apartments are located in Finland’s largest cities, close to public transport and daily services.
The volume of the sale is considerable. At the end of March, the OP-Rental Yield Fund owned 5,373 apartments. The apartments sold to SATO account for about 18% of that total.
At the end of March, the gross value of OP-Rental Yield Fund’s directly owned real estate assets was €1.4 billion. Approximately four-fifths of that is tied up in residential properties. If the sold apartments represent a cross-section of the fund’s portfolio, the transaction would correspond to a real estate asset value of around €200 million.
On the same day, OP Financial Group stated that the real estate market has shown cautious signs of recovery. As a result, OP is able to proceed with redemptions submitted to its real estate funds during the second half of 2024 according to the original schedule in July 2025. However, the temporary suspension of redemptions and subscriptions in the real estate funds, as well as the 50% reduction in management fees, will remain in effect.