Tag: Alcobendas

Intu Wants To Open Europe’s Largest Shopping Centre In Alcobendas

23 February 2017 – Mis Locales

The Spanish capital could soon become home to the largest shopping centre in Europe. The company Intu is working on a new mega-project.

The goal of the British company is to construct the largest shopping centre in Europe. The exact location will be in the Escobares I sector of Alcobendas and it will cover a surface area of 500,000 m2. It will be larger than all of the shopping and leisure centres constructed to date and will take over from Puerto Venecia (located in Zaragoza) as the largest shopping centre on the continent (it has a surface area of 206,000 m2).

Intu is currently engaged in tough negotiations with the owners of the land, including Sareb, and in turn, with the property developer, Levitt-Bosch Aymerich. The multi-national is demanding that ownership of the site be transferred, but it is only intending to make the payment once the property has been constructed. This proposal is causing problems and no agreement has yet been reached regarding the form of payment or the sales price.

Intu is one of the largest shopping centre managers in Europe. In Spain, besides Puerto Venecia, it also operates Intu Asturia in Oviedo and four others, in conjunction with Eurofunds.

Original story: Mis Locales

Translation: Carmel Drake

AEW Europe Buys Amura Building In Madrid For €37M

4 February 2016 – Expansión

The real estate investment manager AEW Europe has acquired the Amura office building, in the Arroyo de la Vega de Alcobendas area of Madrid, for €37 million. The asset has been purchased for the Europe Value Investors (EVI) fund from Union Investment Real Estate, which is headquartered in Hamburg and which has owned the building for twelve years. The operation has been advised by Cushman & Wakefield.

The building was constructed in 2002 and contains five floors of offices, plus two underground floors for parking. In total, it has a surface area of 18,178 m2 and its occupancy rate is currently 67%. The property’s tenants include Euronet Negocios and GEA Process Engineering.

AEW Europe is one of the largest real estate investment managers in Europe, with nine offices and more than 280 employees. It manages assets with a value of €18,200 million.

Meanwhile, the Europe Value Investors fund focuses on the office segment in cities all over Europe and until now, has invested €375 million in a total of 12 assets.

According to the director of EVI, Carsten Czarnetzki, “Amura is a well-located, high quality asset, which provides us with the opportunity to add value and increase revenues by leasing out the empty space”. And he added: “There is a shortage of high quality office space in the market in Madrid and therefore, this acquisition gives us the potential to increase the asset’s value as the recovery of the Spanish economy continues.

Two investments per month

This is the second operation completed by AEW Europe in Madrid this year. The German investment manager made its debut in the Spanish market recently with the purchase of a retail outlet on Calle Serrano, in an operation that was also advised by Cushman & Wakefield. In that case, the firm made the purchase through its City Retail fund, which has an investment budget of €400 million.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

AEW Purchases Office Building In Alcobendas For €39M

9 December 2015 – Expansión

The investor furore for properties in Spain and for office buildings in particular, has resulted in record figures for this business in 2015 and has led to a fierce struggle for the best buildings in the major markets, such as Madrid and Barcelona.

This fight for the real estate gems in the centre of large cities has left many investors unable to close all of the operations they want to in Spain, and for this reason, they have started to look for opportunities beyond the established areas. Such is the case of the fund AEW Europe. The firm, one of the largest real estate investment managers on the continent, is finalising its purchase of an office building, known as the Amura building, in the Arroyo de la Vega area of the Madrilenian suburb of Alcobendas. The area is a long way from the financial centre of Madrid but it is the location of choice for several multinational companies, such as Citibank, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer and Bankinter.

Amura has several features that make it attractive to investors. The building, measuring 18,177 m2 over four levels, has an occupancy rate of 75% with very affordable rents, of around €10/m2/month.

Its main tenant is the Ricoh group, the manufacturer of digital equipment for office use. The Spanish subsidiary of Ricoh opened its headquarters in this building in 2008, leasing an area measuring 1,700 m2, which it increased by a further 800 m2 three years later.

Until now, the property formed part of Union Investment Real Estate’s Spanish portfolio. Union Investment is one of the largest fund managers in Germany, with assets worth €220,000 million under management.

Yields

Union Investment will sell the property to AEW for €39 million, according to real estate sources, which represents a yield of around 5%; that is low for the area, but reflects the furore that exists for these types of properties.

In Europe, AEW owns a portfolio of assets worth more than €16,600 million and it has now set its focus on the Spanish market. “Spain has gone from not existing (for us) to being a key priority market”, said Russell Jewell, the Director of PE funds in Europe for AEW.

Original story: Expansión (by R. Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake