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Aelca Plans To Sell c. 1,000 Homes In 2017

10 April 2017 – El Mundo

The map of the new real estate sector is continuing to take shape, one step at a time, and it is becoming increasingly clear who the main players are going to be and what role each one of them is going to adopt in this cycle. The latest star to come to the fore is Aelca, a property developer founded in Madrid at the end of 2012, in which the US fund Värde Partners purchased a 75% stake in the middle of 2016, taking over the shares that the construction company Avintia had held until then.

After working for almost five years in a very discrete way, Aelca has arrived at this current point in the recovery of the real estate sector with a very clear objective: “We want to be the leading house builder in this new cycle”, explain its founders and CEOs Javier Gómez and José Juan Martín (pictured above, left and right, respectively).

A priori, this aim does not sound like a particularly original aim – it is very similar to those expressed by the three other great property developers, namely, Neinor Homes, Aedas Homes and Vía Célere. (…).

Perhaps, the main difference between Aelca and the other “big four”, as sources at Aelca refer to this select group of giants in the property development sector, is the number of homes that the company has already completed. “We have been working behind the scenes, preparing the way for where we are today”, say Gómez and Martín. “None of the other three large companies has completed 900 homes like we have over the last few years”, they add.

That figure, beyond its absolute value, needs to be put in context, remembering that during the crisis that hit the housing market between 2008 and the end of 2014, almost all sales and starts of new build homes were suspended. (…).

The financial partner’s (Värde) entry into the company’s share capital came in response to the need for growth that its founders understood a property developer such as theirs needed, in order to survive in the residential market that is being created. “In the nine months that we have been working with Värde, we have gone from having land on which to build 3,000 homes to having double that figure”, said Martín. (…).

Aelca closed 2016 with turnover of €103 million and more than 600 homes sold. This year, the company plans to increase revenues by 49%, to €154 million and sell around 1,000 homes.

Projects underway

Currently, the company has 43 property developments in progress in the Community of Madrid, with a total of 1,316 homes. Its delegation in the South region has projects comprising 498 units; the Cataluña-Aragón delegation is building 241 homes, and the Valencia and Alicante region is constructing 145 units. In total, 2,200 homes under construction, according to its plans, and that figure will rise a lot soon.

In line with its strategic objective to consolidate its dominant position in the residential market, Aelca plans to start marketing another 16 developments this year in several locations across the provinces of Barcelona, Málaga, Valencia, Vizcaya and Madrid. (…).

Original story: El Mundo (by Luis M. De Ciria)

Translation: Carmel Drake