Credit: GRI InstituteLiving Strategies: Exclusive Q&A with Patron Capital’s Irina Stamate-Rocha
GRI Institute interview reveals key insights on capital deployment, ESG trade-offs, and navigating Europe's residential markets
August 12, 2025Real Estate
Written by Jorge Aguinaga
At this year’s GRI Living Assets Europe 2025 in London, Irina Stamate-Rocha, Senior Partner at Patron Capital Partners, co-chaired key panels on investment capital and retirement living.
In an exclusive conversation with Diego Tavares, Managing Director Europe & Senior Partner at GRI Institute, Irina provided a detailed look into how Patron is approaching today’s evolving real estate landscape. Her insights touched on short-cycle repositioning, sector-specific strategies, and how the firm is managing the balance between yield, risk, and ESG outcomes across its portfolio.
Founded in 1999, Patron Capital Partners is one of Europe’s leading value-add and opportunistic real estate managers. The firm has raised more than EUR 5.3 billion across over 200 investments, with a focus on operational real estate and selective, opportunity-driven strategies. Backed by a long-standing institutional investor base, Patron combines central investment oversight with strong local execution across Europe.
Hello Irina, thanks for joining us.
Nice to be here at GRI Living Assets Europe. It's great to be invited to speak about what we're doing.
Where are you seeing the most compelling opportunities today?
We in Patron really like the living space, and we try to have differentiated strategies across Europe. I have a big belief, for example, in student housing in the UK, where we have taken a strategy of refurbishing assets and having an entry point well below development costs. We think that is quite attractive and it will protect the rents and keep them affordable. So that is one of the areas we are interested in.
In addition to that, we have been investing for a long time in healthcare and retirement living, and it's still in certain pockets of the market. We see good opportunities to acquire assets at attractive yields.
How have recent changes in interest rates and liquidity constraints reshaped Patron's strategy?
I think it is fair to say that uncertainty is a key feature of the investment world right now. We see geopolitical interest rate shocks - or other shocks - more often than we have in the last 10 years. So how do we try to protect our investments from that?
If possible, we try to keep our investment duration short. So to buy assets, this requires relatively short repositioning strategies, and as well look at trying to get a good premium between the overall yield of cost and the financing costs.
These, we think, are the two ways in which we can mitigate any delays and be quicker to the market - and hopefully quicker to exit those portfolios.
Your Pan European strategy requires a lot of local insight, right? How do you balance this local expertise versus a centralised investment conviction?
Yes, we believe in working with local partners. Patron has been in business for 26 years. We have more than 300 local partners across Europe and we'll have new ones every day. So we work a lot with those local partners.
We may have investment teams or investment convictions in certain parts of the market, but we work with the local partners, our boots on the ground, to underwrite and asset manage those transactions. So it is a hybrid model, and we feel that we supplement each other in terms of making the right investment.
And which regions or countries make the most sense for you right now?
I would say I'm spending a lot of time on the UK market, which is one of our key markets. And as well, I think on a relative basis, I find the Nordics and the German market quite interesting.
They have markets which are very liquid in most cases and where there has been an element of repricing - and we see pockets of opportunities that hopefully we can transact on.
What are the opportunities you’re seeing in Germany at the moment?
Our interest in Germany is thematic, I would say - we have invested in the country for a long time.
From my interest, I think student accommodation is one area that we are particularly interested in, as well as senior living, which has gone through a period of public pricing. And hopefully we see good opportunities coming out of that.
However, like in any other country in Europe, actually transacting is difficult and comes with a lot of challenges. But it's one of the areas where I will spend a lot of time.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations are no longer just a checkbox - how does Patron manage to balance the impact versus the returns?
For me, ESG, particularly the energy part of it, is a no-brainer. We have a lot of operating assets, for example, in student accommodation or private schools, and the investment in new M&E or solar panels from an energy efficiency perspective is very attractive.
Sometimes we manage to finance that with just debt, no equity. So we have accretions in terms of the value coming from a reduction of the operating costs for limited additional equity.
That being said, we are very mindful about what certifications we're looking at, because not all of them make sense for all types of assets. So we try to have a balanced approach, but energy efficiency and where it impacts the operating cost is one of the key themes we are big believers in.
Thank you very much for your time, Irina!
At the GRI Institute, we are proud to foster a trusted platform for dialogue among senior decision-makers shaping the future of real estate across Europe. Leaders like Irina bring invaluable insight into the evolution of the living sectors, where capital, regulation, and demand dynamics continue to shift.
Continue the conversation with top investors and partners at Europe GRI 2025 - Summer Edition, taking place in Paris on September 10th-11th, also featuring the GRI Awards Real Estate - Europe 2025.
At this year’s GRI Living Assets Europe 2025 in London, Irina Stamate-Rocha, Senior Partner at Patron Capital Partners, co-chaired key panels on investment capital and retirement living.
In an exclusive conversation with Diego Tavares, Managing Director Europe & Senior Partner at GRI Institute, Irina provided a detailed look into how Patron is approaching today’s evolving real estate landscape. Her insights touched on short-cycle repositioning, sector-specific strategies, and how the firm is managing the balance between yield, risk, and ESG outcomes across its portfolio.
Irina and her fellow panellists on the opening Investment Capital Talkshow at GRI Living Assets Europe 2025 (GRI Institute)
Founded in 1999, Patron Capital Partners is one of Europe’s leading value-add and opportunistic real estate managers. The firm has raised more than EUR 5.3 billion across over 200 investments, with a focus on operational real estate and selective, opportunity-driven strategies. Backed by a long-standing institutional investor base, Patron combines central investment oversight with strong local execution across Europe.
Hello Irina, thanks for joining us.
Nice to be here at GRI Living Assets Europe. It's great to be invited to speak about what we're doing.
Where are you seeing the most compelling opportunities today?
We in Patron really like the living space, and we try to have differentiated strategies across Europe. I have a big belief, for example, in student housing in the UK, where we have taken a strategy of refurbishing assets and having an entry point well below development costs. We think that is quite attractive and it will protect the rents and keep them affordable. So that is one of the areas we are interested in.
In addition to that, we have been investing for a long time in healthcare and retirement living, and it's still in certain pockets of the market. We see good opportunities to acquire assets at attractive yields.
Irina moderated the opening Investment Capital Talkshow, which covered rising inflation, investment strategies, and the need for more targeted investments (GRI Institute)
How have recent changes in interest rates and liquidity constraints reshaped Patron's strategy?
I think it is fair to say that uncertainty is a key feature of the investment world right now. We see geopolitical interest rate shocks - or other shocks - more often than we have in the last 10 years. So how do we try to protect our investments from that?
If possible, we try to keep our investment duration short. So to buy assets, this requires relatively short repositioning strategies, and as well look at trying to get a good premium between the overall yield of cost and the financing costs.
These, we think, are the two ways in which we can mitigate any delays and be quicker to the market - and hopefully quicker to exit those portfolios.
Your Pan European strategy requires a lot of local insight, right? How do you balance this local expertise versus a centralised investment conviction?
Yes, we believe in working with local partners. Patron has been in business for 26 years. We have more than 300 local partners across Europe and we'll have new ones every day. So we work a lot with those local partners.
We may have investment teams or investment convictions in certain parts of the market, but we work with the local partners, our boots on the ground, to underwrite and asset manage those transactions. So it is a hybrid model, and we feel that we supplement each other in terms of making the right investment.
Irina also led discussions in the Retirement Living Investments session at GRI Living Assets Europe 2025 (GRI Institute)
And which regions or countries make the most sense for you right now?
I would say I'm spending a lot of time on the UK market, which is one of our key markets. And as well, I think on a relative basis, I find the Nordics and the German market quite interesting.
They have markets which are very liquid in most cases and where there has been an element of repricing - and we see pockets of opportunities that hopefully we can transact on.
What are the opportunities you’re seeing in Germany at the moment?
Our interest in Germany is thematic, I would say - we have invested in the country for a long time.
From my interest, I think student accommodation is one area that we are particularly interested in, as well as senior living, which has gone through a period of public pricing. And hopefully we see good opportunities coming out of that.
However, like in any other country in Europe, actually transacting is difficult and comes with a lot of challenges. But it's one of the areas where I will spend a lot of time.
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations are no longer just a checkbox - how does Patron manage to balance the impact versus the returns?
For me, ESG, particularly the energy part of it, is a no-brainer. We have a lot of operating assets, for example, in student accommodation or private schools, and the investment in new M&E or solar panels from an energy efficiency perspective is very attractive.
Sometimes we manage to finance that with just debt, no equity. So we have accretions in terms of the value coming from a reduction of the operating costs for limited additional equity.
That being said, we are very mindful about what certifications we're looking at, because not all of them make sense for all types of assets. So we try to have a balanced approach, but energy efficiency and where it impacts the operating cost is one of the key themes we are big believers in.
Thank you very much for your time, Irina!
At the GRI Institute, we are proud to foster a trusted platform for dialogue among senior decision-makers shaping the future of real estate across Europe. Leaders like Irina bring invaluable insight into the evolution of the living sectors, where capital, regulation, and demand dynamics continue to shift.
Continue the conversation with top investors and partners at Europe GRI 2025 - Summer Edition, taking place in Paris on September 10th-11th, also featuring the GRI Awards Real Estate - Europe 2025.