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Aliseda Enters House Development Market

9 May 2016 – Cinco Días

Aliseda is joining the new wave of recovery in the market for building new homes, as it seeks to expand its business beyond the sale of Popular’s real estate assets. To this end, the company is finalising the acquisition of a new property development business, hand in hand with some new partners.

The company is looking for additional activity in the development of homes on behalf of third parties. But it will also invest in some of these future developments using its own funds. In 2016, it will launch around 25 new build residential projects, which will mean bringing around 1,500 homes onto the market. From 2017, the pace of construction will increase, to reach 2,000 homes. “This represents a new business opportunity”, said Javier de Oro, the Director of Real Estate Assets at Aliseda, speaking at SIMA, the real estate fair held in Madrid this weekend.

Aliseda was created as a management platform for Popular, with the aim of marketing the burden of assets that the bank had accumulated during the property crisis. At the end of 2014, the financial institution sold 51% of the company to the US funds Värde Partners and Kennedy Wilson. Both firms specialise in finding opportunities in the real estate sector.

Värde, for example, has been active buying up land, according to market sources, and Kennedy Wilson has joined forces with Renta Corporación to undertake new real estate projects.

New business line

Currently, Aliseda focuses on two lines of business: the management of foreclosed assets and of doubtful loans. It manages land worth €7,000 million and holds more than 55,000 assets, of which 31,000 are being marketed and are published on its website (25,700 of those are residential). At the end of 2015, it had sold 13,000 properties, to record sales of €2,000 million.

41% of those assets were new build properties. Part of Aliseda’s activity involves constructing homes on land owned by Popular and at unfinished sites taken over by the bank. But the next step is now going to involve selling  properties off-plan and with different partners, outside of Popular’s circle. The forms of collaboration will be varied, given that the companies may provide their own land, hire Aliseda to manage the building work and the real estate company take decisions, on a case by case basis, for those projects that it also invests, thanks to the cash generated by the company.

Areas to build in

According to the Head of Aliseda, there are opportunities to construct new homes beyond Madrid, Barcelona and the Costa del Sol, such as in, for example, the Balearic Islands, Córdoba, Almería, Alicante, Valencia and other major cities: “We think now is a good time for residential assets. Last year, 400,000 homes were sold, in 2017, that figure will reach around 450,000 and by 2020, it will reach 550,000, based on conservative estimates”.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake