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Xpandia and Rabobank Team Up to Sell Two Hotels in Lisbon for €40 Million
20 July 2018
The Cerquia Group is betting on the Portuguese market, selling two new hotels with 293 rooms in the centre of the Portuguese capital. The real estate group and the Dutch bank’s joint venture was created nine years ago.
Lisbon is becoming ever more attractive to Spain’s real estate companies. Two more assets backed by Spanish capital, though this time with Dutch backing as well, are coming to Portugal’s capital. Xpandia Projects, Grupo Cerquia’s hospitality company, is marketing two assets in the city centre for forty million euros, according to statements by sources at the company to EjePrime.
The company created a joint venture nine years ago for the project with the financial institution Rabobank, the owner of the asset before the development. “We have equal shares in the project, they came in with the asset, and we are doing the rest,” representatives at the Spanish company stated, regarding the two assets on sale in Lisbon.
The first of them, which has 163 rooms, is located next to the Praça Marques de Pombal and has 6,038 square meters of surface area and 1,607 square meters of parking. The hotel group Hotusa will manage the property, which will open its doors in August.
Meanwhile, the second asset is located close to the Praça Saldanha. With 4,743 square meters of surface area, the 130-room hotel will be inaugurated during the first quarter of 2019. Like the property at the Praça Marques de Pombal, this building will have a 1,296 square meter parking lot and will be operated by Hotusa.
The assets are to be sold together, the real estate group announced. However, separate valuations for the hotel’s would give a price of 22.2 million euros for the Pombal hotel and 17.7 million euros for the hotel on Saldanha. The price per square meter of the above-ground surface area of the total would reach 3,700 euros.
Potentially interested parties in the two hotels include international funds and family offices. A number of the Andorran, Spanish, French and Chinese groups would be interested in the properties, which are being marketed by the CBRE real estate consultancy.
Both assets have common areas on the ground floors including restaurants and work areas for tourists and executives, two types of clients which are ever more present in the Lisbon hotel market in recent years.
Expansion plan in Portugal
The 293 rooms that Xpandia is placing on the market will not be the last ones developed by the company in Lisbon. The Spanish group is already finalising the purchase of new land and assets in the Portuguese capital, although it is not certain that it will also be in partnership with Rabobank, “with whom we have an excellent relationship,” according to sources from the company. “We are in an advanced stage of negotiations to acquire a plot of land in the prime zone,” Cerquia noted. Xpandia’s plan involves developing 800 rooms in the next three years in the city.
Also, the real estate company is also looking to the north of the country, putting a further focus on Porto. The company “is betting” on the capital of northern Portugal, where it is “studying several operations” for new projects.
Investment in Valencia
Next to Portugal, Valencia is another of Xpandia’s strongholds. The company, which will have 425 rooms ready before 2020, will start work this year on its first hotel in the centre of Valencia and is already working on new acquisitions in the Spanish market. Under the direction of Javier Pérez Picallo, the hotel company will develop 67 rooms for its first asset, located on Guillem de Castro Street, in the centre of the city.
Also, the company expects to finalise a second project in the coming months that, if closed, will have 69 rooms and will also be located in the downtown area of the city. Both hotels will be operated by the Ibis chain, owned by the French hotel giant Accor.
“Valencia is an area with many possibilities for creating hotels,” Pérez Picallo told EjePrime a few months ago. The group’s top management, formed by the president of the holding, Carlos Cercadillo, and Jesus Salinero, began Xpandia’s operation together with a group of investors whose identities are unknown.
Xpandia is already analysing potential acquisitions for a second phase of growth for the company, where it expects to purchase assets, mainly for rehabilitation, in other Spanish cities. “Today, eastern Spain and the Andalusian coast are the two regions with the greatest interest for operators and investors,” says Pérez Picallo.
Original Story: EjePrime – Jabier Izquierdo
Translation: Richard Turner