STOCKHOLM - IKEA’s Ingka Investments is in talks to buy commercial property in prime locations in several big European cities after it finalised its first-ever such acquisition last month, its managing director said.The investment arm of Ingka Group, which owns most IKEA stores, is pushing into the real estate market as part of IKEA’s shift towards big city-centres from out-of-town. So far, such locations are leased.
“We have ongoing discussions in big European cities,” Ingka Investments Managing Director Krister Mattsson said in an interview. “It takes time to buy properties, but there is a lot in the pipeline,” he told Reuters. Despite the exodus from high streets prompted by the coronavirus, price tags for the kind of properties that Ingka Investments is hunting for have not tumbled, Mattsson said.
Besides good space for the IKEA store, buildings could also include other retail, office and even residential space, and Ingka Group would take over as landlord.