The real estate investor Adler Group, which is under pressure, is selling a fifth of its housing stock.
15,350 apartments and 186 commercial units worth 1.485 billion euros are to be sold to competitor LEG Immobilien, as both companies announced on Monday.
The sales price will be slightly lower, among other things because Adler will retain 10.1 percent of the shares in the housing companies for tax reasons.
However, before the final purchase agreement, LEG wants to take a closer look at the books.
According to LEG, 90 percent of the apartments with relatively low rents, most of which belong to the subsidiaries Adler Real Estate and Westgrund, are in Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Bremen.
Adler is at least partially implementing its announcement to dispose of a large part of its portfolio of 70,000 apartments in order to reduce the mountain of billions in debt.
"The sale can lead to a significant reduction in the leverage of the Adler through the repayment of bonds and loans," it said in the announcement.
A week ago, however, Co-boss Maximilian Rienecker spoke of 40,000 to 60,000 apartments that could be sold.
Allegations against companies
The Adler Group is under double pressure: On the one hand, investors are calling for the level of debt to be reduced significantly.
On the other hand, the British short seller Fraser Perring raises allegations against the company, which have caused the price of Adler shares to slide.
The industry giant Vonovia took advantage of the crisis and secured an option to buy 13.3 percent of Adler.
This corresponds to half of the stake held by the major Adler shareholder Aggregate Holdings.
Vonovia's announcement on Friday was followed by a slight recovery in the share.
At the start of the stock exchange on Monday, the sales report was also received positively.
The Adler Group's share opened at EUR 12.49, which is 70 cents above the closing price on Friday.
The course fell back to this level in the course of the morning.