Portugal 
Spain 
Greece 
From Porta Nuova to City Life, Milan towards the record
11 December, Corriere della Sera
Big bargains for a few. In the first nine months of 2017, the transactions carried out by institutional investors for buildings dedicated to service use in Milan have exceeded the threshold of one billion euro of value. If we add the 272 million euro paid by Dea to acquire the Edison headquarter in Foro Bonaparte in mid-November, and the 107 million invested in October by the fund Antirion for the Carige offices in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, we can assume that the record registered in 2015 for 1.6 billion will be surpassed. And we must not forget that during the last week of the year all the important deals in Milan are usually closed.
The trends
On the other hand, the market of small investors as well as of entrepreneurs and professionals looking a for an office is still mild. Not only because there is a large number of vacant units but also there is also a great availability of houses. Therefore, the possibility to reconvert an office into an apartment and put it on sale as such doesn’t seem to be a successful tactic, considering that offices in apartments blocks are usually at the ground floor.
However, prices have curbed their fall and have registered a 0.7% drop on yearly basis, according to the figures by Nomisma updated till the end of November. The research centre expects a slight recovery in the next three years with values growing by 2.6% altogether.
Returns are slightly rising, reaching on average 5.1%, against the 4.9% of the residential segment or the 6.6% of the shops. We must stress nevertheless that returns for offices in prime areas are the lowest, in some cases going below 5%.
In the first nine months of the year, offices in the cities have occupied a surface for 25 thousand Sq m but this hasn’t helped to beat the number of unlet spaces, that still represents a large portion, 12.5%.
The areas
The main operations carried out throughout the year, besides the two already mentioned, have exceeded 100 million euro.
150 million euro has been invested by Allianz to acquire the tower in Via Melchiorre Gioia 26. Beni Stabili bought for two properties in the city centre (in Piazza San Fedele and in Corso Magenta) from Creval for 118 million euro. Moreover, it’s very likely that the divestiture operations by banks aren’t concluded yet.
Finally, Allianz, willing to move its offices to the Isozaki tower in City Life, has sold for 117.5 million euro its three offices in the city.
We must also remind the mega transfer for 300 million euro of the Chloe portfolio of Prelios, transferring properties to the fund Areef, involving many offices in Milan.
Form the chart here included, representing the most interesting values registered by Fimaa, including the most interesting areas for real estate in Milan. Prime properties are excluded from the figures, however, exceeding by far the values here reported. For instance, the purchase by Allianz in Via Melchiorre Gioia, beside Porta Nuova, cost 10 thousand euro per Sq m.
Source: Corriere della Sera
Translator: Cristina Ambrosi