InvestingAbroad: The Irish wealth asset managers Custom House Capital is spending €121 million on four investment properties in Germany and France.

The fund is paying €55 million to a French developer, Bouygues Immobilier, to forward-fund two office buildings at Plein Quest and Le Patio in Marseille. The buildings are due to be completed in 2008 and 2009.

The Plein Quest property, located on the periphery of the city, is a single four-storey building with 11,072sq m (119,178sq ft) of space.

It will have 290 car-parking spaces and the owners will have the option of separating it into two or three independent blocks.

The second building will be at Le Patio, close to the city centre. The eight-storey block will have a floor area of 8,920sq m (96,014sq ft) and 94 car-parking spaces.

Paul McDowell of Ganly Walters, who advised Custom House Capital on all four deals, said that the forward-funding opportunities available in Marseille, Nice and Lyon maximised returns, maintained lower operating costs and meant that many businesses were relocating to these southern regions.

The two German acquisitions involved office investments in Hamburg and Stuttgart. The Hamburg property, a seven-storey office building at Heidenkampssweg, was bought for €34 million, representing a net yield of 6.04 per cent.

Built 11 years ago, the block has a floor area of 10,465sq m (112,644sq ft) and has a sole tenant on a new 12-year lease.

The second property in Stuttgart is a new office building, the Colorado Building, which cost €32.5 million.

The 18-storey tower block, with a black glass facade, has 10,945sq m (117,811sq ft) of space and is multi-tenanted with 75 per cent of the space occupied and the remaining 25 per cent on a five-year rental guarantee.

The initial yield in this case is 5.75 per cent.

Harry Cassidy, chief executive of Custom House Capital, said these four properties provided good investment opportunities for their clients and underlined their ability to source high quality investments in two European markets.