Tag: Anticipa Real Estate

Blackstone Crowns its Position as the Largest Property Owner in Spain

18 September 2018 – Cinco Días

Blackstone likes Spain. And specifically, the Spanish real estate market. In recent years, the fund manager has made several large purchases linked to property in the country, displaying its enormous financial capacity to handle operations of any size.

In fact, the fund has now become the largest real estate owner in Spain, where it owns assets worth more than €20 billion, according to the figure compiled by Europa Press, placing it well ahead of the largest Socimis, such as Merlin (€11.785 billion) and Colonial (€11.19 billion).

The fund quickly saw an opportunity with the Testa operation, given that some of the shareholders wanted to exit the company, such as the clear case of Merlin, and the willingness of Santander and BBVA to sell.

The acquisition of 50.01% of Testa Residencial from Merlin, BBVA and Santander for €948 million – an operation that is still open to the other shareholders – followed the very recent purchase of the Socimi Hispania, a transaction worth more than €1.9 billion. Initially, Blackstone agreed to acquire the 16% stake owned by the investor George Soros, and then it launched a takeover bid for the rest of the company. In that case, it acquired 46 hotels, which were added to the 15 it had already acquired from Sabadell and whereby the largest owner of rooms in Spain was born.

In July, Blackstone acquired a logistics portfolio from the Socimi Lar España for €120 million. And recently, it was revealed that Blackstone and Centerbridge had teamed up to submit an offer for Santander’s headquarters in Boadilla del Monte (Madrid) amounting to €3 billion, in a bid that ended at midnight yesterday.

In Spain, Blackstone’s largest operation was undoubtedly the purchase from Santander of 51% of Popular’s real estate business for €5 billion. But that was not its only bank-related deal. It also acquired the portfolio linked to the property of the now extinct entity CatalunyaCaixa. The fund created the company Anticipa Real Estate to manage those toxic assets and it has been putting some of those foreclosed homes up for rent through its various Socimis: Albirana and Torbel (flats acquired from Sabadell), which are both listed on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB).

Moreover, one of Blackstone’s first operations was also one of the most contested politically by the leftist groups, when in 2014, it acquired 1,800 social housing properties from the Town Hall of Madrid for around €130 million – those homes currently form part of the portfolio owned by the Socimi Fidere.

Blackstone entered the property market in Spain in 2014 on the hunt for bargains following the crisis, firstly focusing on bank portfolios. But the recent acquisitions of Hispania and Testa take the US giant in another direction. There is enormous liquidity in the market, which has given a great investment capacity to these funds. Now, it is sounding out opportunities in which to invest in through its funds in real estate as an alternative to public debt with higher returns.

This New York-based firm, which is led by Stephen Schwarzman (pictured above) as its President and CEO, is the largest manager of real estate funds in the world, with $19.4 billion in assets under management, according to its results for the first half of the year.

Original story: Cinco Días

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone’s Socimi Torbel Debuts on the MAB at €11.45/Share

5 July 2018 – Voz Pópuli

Torbel Investments, the new Socimi owned by the US fund Blackstone, is going to make its debut on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) this Thursday at a price of €11.45 per share, giving the company a market value of €92.2 million.

Torbel, the second Socimi that is going to be managed by Anticipa Real Estate, owns a portfolio of 2,495 assets – 2,165 of the properties are flats and family homes, and the remainder are commercial premises, parking spaces and storerooms -, which have a combined market value of €218 million.

These assets are distributed throughout Spain, with the Community of Valencia accounting for the largest share – it is home to 36.5% of the total between the provinces of Valencia and Alicante -, followed by Cataluña, with 17.8% of the total, and Madrid with 15.9%. The remaining 30% are located in Andalucía and Castilla-La Mancha.

All of these assets, whose overall occupancy rate amounts to around 58% (tenants are being sought for the remaining 42%), proceed from the Empire portfolio that Blackstone purchased from Banco Sabadell between 2016 and 2017; they are managed by the US fund’s subsidiary Anticipa.

Anticipa Real Estate was constituted in 2014 after passing into the hands of Blackstone and has been an evolving entity ever since. It has gone from being a servicer that managed assets for third parties to being a management platform of real estate assets and mortgage loans, all with the aim of becoming the leading residential rental manager in Spain.

Torbel is the fourth residential Socimi that Blackstone has debuted on the stock market in Spain following Fidere Patrimonio, Corona Patrimonial and Albirana Properties.

Original story: Voz Pópuli 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Santander & Blackstone Inject €300M into their Real Estate Company

11 May 2018 – Eje Prime

Banco Santander and Blackstone are starting put the finishing touches to the bank’s sale of Popular’s real estate assets to the fund. As part of this process, both companies have decided to inject €300 million into Project Quasar Investment, the jointly owned real estate firm that they created in March to receive the €30 billion in assets transferred by the bank in the summer of 2017.

Blackstone owns 51% of the real estate company, whilst Santander owns the remaining 49% stake. The constitution of the company was undertaken with a minimum share capital of €3,000 and forms part of the commercial steps that both entities need to perform to close the operation, according to El Economista.

In addition to purchasing the majority of Popular’s real estate assets, the US fund also purchased Aliseda, the extinct bank’s servicer, from Santander, through which it will pilot the sale of the assets acquired. Part of this portfolio management process explains why Quasar has appointed Diego San José as its President, a strong man from Blackstone’s real estate department in Spain.

The following directors will work alongside San José to lead the real estate company: Eduard Mendiluce, CEO of Anticipa Real Estate, the US fund’s own asset manager; Christophe Dubois, Director General of Real Estate at Blackstone in London; and Jean François Pascal, the President of Fidere Patrimonio.

Meanwhile, on Santander’s side, it will be represented by the bank’s Head of Real Estate, Javier García Carranza Benjumea; its Director of Non-Performing Assets, Jaime Rodríguez Andrade; and the Metrovacesa board member appointed by Santander, Carlos Manzano.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s Housing Sector is Heading for Another Golden Cycle

6 February 2018 – Cinco Días

Ten years ago, the largest real estate bubble of the democracy was about to burst, and although it was not the first, it was by far the most spectacular:  not only were residential property prices extremely high, everything relating to property was excessive: the volume of homes built, the amount of credit granted and the number of sales recorded. And although there were those who warned that the bubble would burst and the consequences would be dire, no one guessed how dramatic they would actually be.

Now, a decade later and four years after the recovery began, the consensus amongst analysts is that we are starting a new golden cycle that shares almost no similarities with the one that burst in 2008. The most optimistic observers even forecast five years of stable and sustained increases in house prices, as well as an increase in house sales and in the construction of new properties boosted by the global economic recovery.

In terms of prices, the forecasts for 2018 range between a conservative 3% increase and an average of 6% for the whole country. Nevertheless, regardless of the figure projected for the country as a whole, all of the studies agree that house prices will rise at different speeds this year. Madrid, Barcelona (but not the rest of Cataluña) and the Balearic Islands will clearly perform better than the rest, with price increases in the double-digits. And although they will record their fifth consecutive year of rises, prices will still be around 27% below their former peaks, on average, according to Eduard Mendiluce, CEO of Anticipa Real Estate.

The forecasts for this year are not surprising if we take into account the latest figures for 2017, relating to the third quarter, which show an annual increase in house prices of 6.7% YoY (…).

In terms of the areas that will see the most activity, Victor Pérez Arias, Managing Director of the international real estate fund manager ASG Iberia, says that the Mediterranean Arc will continue to account for a great deal of activity, spurred on by the pull of overseas demand (..).

According to the CEO of Servihabitat, Julián Cabanillas, given that more than 470,000 homes were sold in 2017, the psychological barrier of 500,000 is going to be exceeded again this year, something that has not been seen since the fateful year of 2008.

One of the determining factors in the return of house purchases to positive rates was the reopening of the credit tap. Nevertheless, access to financing is still a long way from the free bar decreed at the beginning of the 2000s. The granting of a mortgage now requires certain solvency criteria, which forces future borrowers to have savings – and that requirement was avoided in the past on too many occasions. This prudence on the part of the banks is one of the keys that, according to the experts, differentiates this cycle from the previous one and distances the ghost of a new bubble.

In fact, the CEO of Sociedad de Tasación, Juan Fernández-Aceytuno, says that whilst the volume of mortgages granted is considerably below the volume of purchases, the market will be healthy and that is what happened in 2017. With the official figures yet to be published, all indications are that around 470,000 house purchases were recorded in 2017, whilst the banks granted no more than 320,000 mortgages (…).

The previous crisis also hit property developers hard, given that demand was stopped in its tracks from 2008 onwards, following the outbreak of the global economic crisis, whereas just two years earlier, the number of new housing permits had set a new record, with more than 800,0000. Numerous companies had started projects without any presales, convinced that they would sell all of the units quickly. Given that it takes between 18 and 24 months to build a housing development, many buildings were finished only to spend years unoccupied. In this way, construction was suspended, above all, from 2009 onwards and even today, just 10% of the record volumes reached twelve years ago are being built.

Nevertheless, given that in the large cities and certain areas along the Mediterranean Coast, the absorption of stock has evolved at a good pace in recent times, for the experts, it seems that the time has come to increase the rate of construction once more. That is what the National Director of Residential and Land at CBRE, Samuel Población, thinks. He expects the supply of new homes to start to increase from the end of this year, although its impact will be greater in the second half of 2019. That consultancy firm is sure that despite this rise in supply, prices will not increase by less than 5-6%, with Madrid, Barcelona and a large part of the coast as the most dynamic markets (…).

Original story: Cinco Días (by Raquel Díaz Guijarro)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Haya Real Estate Prepares for its Stock Market Debut

23 January 2018 – Cinco Días

Haya Real Estate is another player in the real estate sector that is heading towards the stock market. The firm manages property developer loans and foreclosed real estate assets on behalf of Bankia, Sareb, Cajamar, Liberbank, BBVA and other financial institutions, worth €39.884 billion.

The company is owned by the private equity fund Cerberus, which created it back in October 2013 after acquiring a firm dedicated to real estate management from Bankia, called Bankia Habitat, in light of the need for the Spanish financial sector to get rid of its property-related toxic assets in a professional way.

Sources at the investment bank indicate that Haya’s debut on the Spanish stock market has been sketched out and will follow the format of the debuts of the property developers Neinor and Aedas, in 2017, and the upcoming debuts of Metrovacesa and Vía Célere. No decision has yet been taken regarding the valuation or percentage of the stake that Cerberus will sell. The news of Haya’s possible stock market debut was published by Bloomberg on Monday night. A spokesperson for Haya declined to comment on the news.

Haya, led by Carlos Abad Rico (formerly of Canal + and Sogecable) offers services throughout the entire chain of the real estate sector, but it is not a property developer: it manages, administers, securitises and sells assets but does not own them. The company mainly focuses on two businesses. Firstly, the advice and subscription of loans and guarantees, the management and recovery of debt and the conversion of the obligations on property developer loans into foreclosed real estate assets. And, secondly, the recovery and management of property through its sale or rental. The firm employs 680 professionals and has a sales network comprising 2,400 brokers. The value of the firm’s property developer debt portfolio amounts to €28.719 billion and of its real estate assets is €11.165 billion.

Haya recorded EBITDA of €89.9 million during the first nine months of 2017, up by 54% compared to the same period a year earlier, with sales of assets worth around €2.5 billion and an effective turnover (essentially commissions) of €165.8 million. The average management fee during the first nine months of last year was 4.25%.

Competitors

Haya has been growing with aplomb since 2013, but it has several major rivals. Blackstone, which purchased 51% of Popular’s real estate assets from Santander last summer for more than €5 billion, created Anticipa Real Estate, under the structure of the former Cataluña Caixa Inmobiliaria. That platform acquired 40,000 mortgages from the extinct Catalan entity for €4.123 billion in 2015. Since then, it has acquired those types of mortgage debt portfolios, with an investment that amounts to around €7 billion.

Meanwhile, Servihabitat belongs to the fund Texas Pacific Group, (TPG), which has held a 51% stake in the servicer since September 2013, when CaixaBank sold it that percentage, holding onto the remaining 49%. It manages assets worth around €50 billion. Altamira is owned by Santander (15%) and the fund Apollo (85%), which acquired its stake in November 2013. Its assets in Spain are also worth around €50 billion. Solvia, owned by Sabadell, manages assets linked to real estate worth more than €31 billion.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Pablo Martín Simón, Laura Salces Acebes & Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s Residential Rental Sector Continues to Thrive

6 January 2018 – Cinco Días

The current rental market in Spain has nothing or very little to do with the one that existed in the noughties (2000-2009), when being a tenant was almost equivalent to being a second-class citizen, as Gustavo Rossi, President of Alquiler Seguro, recalls. A study compiled by Idealista maintains that whilst in 2000, homes offered for rent represented just 9% of the market, by the end of 2017, Madrid was the third-placed city in the ranking of places with the most rental homes in Europe, whilst Barcelona was ranked sixth.

That increase in supply has been driven by an exponential growth in demand for rental homes and by the boom in tourist rentals. During the first few years of the crisis, demand switched to the rental market, above all due to necessity. Faced with the impossibility of buying a home due to the high prices or the closure of the credit tap by the banks, or even both factors, families had to resort to renting as their plan B.

Nevertheless, and as the economic and employment recovery has been gaining momentum, although the majority of those who rent still aspire to become homeowners, increasingly more households are opting to lease regardless of their economic capacity or solvency level. They are the new tenants by conviction. “The impact that the no-credit-generation (those who are not willing to get into debt and who prefer to pay to use a home) is having on the market is considerable”, explains Rossi.

One way or another, the percentage of households that rent their homes has gone from just 11% in 2001 to almost double that figure, more than 20% in 2017, according to figures from the sector. That progression is even more marked in the large cities since it is estimated that in Madrid and Barcelona, more than 30% of families rent their homes, which brings Spain closer to the European parameters, where the average number of rental homes exceeds that 30% threshold (…).

Sources at Fotocasa are convinced that this year (2018) there will be a lot of talk about the rental market once again. “The high returns that investors are seeking, the boom in tourist apartments and the change in mentality (towards renting) are going to continue putting upward pressure on rental prices, above all in the large cities”, says the firm’s Head of Research, Beatriz Toribio. In this sense, the table published by the Bank of Spain comparing yields on rental homes with those on the stock market (Ibex 35) and fixed income securities leaves little room for doubt. The latest data reveals a gross profit from rental properties of 4.2% p.a., which soars to 10.9% if we add the gain that can be obtained when a property is sold (capital appreciation) (…).

The experts offer two pieces of advice. Before choosing between traditional rental and tourist lets, investors should analyse all of the variables because it is not always more attractive for a property to be let for very short stays (refer to the comparative graph). And the Administrations are demanding that investors bet more on the rental segment, in the form of direct subsidies and tax reliefs, to encourage owners to put empty homes onto the market and that will allow them to reach maturity. “The rental market is here to stay”, says Eduard Mendiluce, CEO at Anticipa Real Estate.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Raquel Díaz Guijarro)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone & Santander Will Transfer 21,000 Of Popular’s Homes To Various Socimis

30 October 2017 – Cinco Días

The sale of the real estate assets proceeding from Popular to Blackstone is not over yet, but the strategy behind the operation is already very clear and will reinforce the US fund’s position as the largest homeowner in Spain. The American firm’s plan involves replicating its previous purchase of banking portfolios linked to real estate on a grand scale. Specifically, the fund will transfer a large part of these homes to several Socimis with the aim of renting them out. A small proportion, the lowest quality properties, will be put up for sale.

In August, Santander sold 51% of Popular’s real estate to Blackstone, together with the real estate management platform Aliseda, which it had previously repurchased from Värde and Kennedy Wilson. These assets (comprising homes, land, office and doubtful debt) were worth around €10,000 million, and so Blackstone will pay almost €5,100 million when the operation is finally closed at the beginning of 2018.

Of that transaction, Blackstone and Santander will manage around 80,000 assets through Aliseda. Of those, 30,000 correspond to homes from property developer loans, according to market sources. Now, it has been revealed that the strategy of the two partners involves transferring approximately 70%, in other words, almost 21,000 homes, to several of the US fund’s Socimis with the aim of putting them up for rent, explain sources in the sector (…).

Blackstone has already followed this strategy in the past. Its first major operation in Spain was the purchase of 40,000 mortgages from the now extinct Catalunya Caixa for €4,123 million in 2015. Next, it created the platform Anticipa Real Estate to manage those assets. Prior to the purchase of Popular’s real estate, it had already acquired around €7,000 million in these types of assets, of which 12,000 were homes.

To create the residential giant, the US firm began to create Socimis to which to transfer its properties for rent. The first of these companies was Albirana Properties, which made its debut on the Alternative Investment Market in March, with a market capitalisation of €170 million and 5,000 rental homes under management.

But that was just the beginning. Since then, Blackstone has created several more Socimis, such as Tourmalet, Torbel, Albirana II and Pegarena, according to the tool Insight View from Iberinform. Now, Blackstone will identify the best homes, put them up for rent and package them into several different Socimis.

Currently, Blackstone is involved in a detailed assessment process of the properties in order to proceed with their appraisal, according to sources in the sector, which will conclude with the completion of the operation during the first quarter next year. The other homes, those that will not be transferred to the Socimis, comprise around 9,000 units. They are the worst quality properties and will likely be put up for sale on the retail market.

Blackstone first entered the rental market with the purchase of homes from Madrid’s Municipal Housing Company in 2013, which it subsequently grouped into the Socimi Fidere, whose shares are also traded on the MAB and which has a market capitalisation of €268 million.

Blackstone, which is led by Claudio Boada as the CEO in Spain, is particularly active in the real estate sector in the country. Last week, it purchased the company HI Partners, the owner of 14 holiday hotels, from Sabadell for €630 million.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Anticipa Real Estate: House Sales Could Reach 526,000 In 2018

20 October 2017 – El País

House sales in Spain may reach 526,000 units in 2018, up by 9.3% with respect to the 481,000 operations that are expected to be closed in 2017 (which, in turn, represents 10.1% more than last year), provided financing conditions and the performance of the Spanish and Eurozone economies continue on course. Of that total, the bulk will be replacement homes (upgrades) and just 275,000 will involve the creation of new households. Moreover, the prices of new and second-hand homes will continue to rise with a growth rate of 5.8% during the fourth quarter of 2017 and of another 5% during 2018, although they will still be 23% lower than the peaks recorded in 2007.

Those are some of the findings of a report by Anticipa Real Estate, specialising in real estate management and loans, and belonging to the international fund Blackstone, about the housing market in Spain 2017-2019, which the firm’s CEO, Eduard Mendiluce, presented at the Barcelona Meeting Point conference, together with Josep Oliver, a professor from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), whose team compiled the research.

The increase that is forecast by the company with respect to the minimums recorded in 2013, when just 285,000 transactions were completed, will reach 85% by 2018. Nevertheless, according to Professor Oliver, the market volumes are still 42% below the peaks of 2006, when more than 900,000 private homes were sold.

Other figures that are below the maximums reached in the boom years are the number of finished homes (private and social housing properties) in Spain. The report sets a total of 63,400 units for 2019, compared to 62,900 units forecast for 2017. Although these figures represent a significant increase (more than 48%) with respect to the minimum recorded in 2016 (42,700 finished homes), the volume is 90% lower than the expansion peaks.

In terms of Cataluña, the research indicates that the number of private home sales should amount to around 82,000 during 2017 as a whole (up by 10.8% YoY) and 90,000 during 2018 (up by 9.8%). In terms of prices, they are forecast to increase by 6.9% in 2017 and by 6.1% in 2018. Given that the reduction in house prices was greater in Cataluña than across Spain as a whole (almost 45% compared to 37%), prices in 2018 are still expected to be 27% lower than those of 2007.

Original story: El País (by S.L.L)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Anticipa Evaluates Purchase Of Sareb’s Large RE Debt Portfolio

8 November 2016 – Expansión

The real estate manager Anticipa Real Estate, a subsidiary of the US fund Blackstone, has expressed its interest in acquiring a portfolio of 200 non-performing loans worth €1,000 million, which the bad bank Sareb put up for sale last month.

It is the largest real estate debt portfolio that the Spanish bad bank has put on the market in its three and a half years of life. Sareb hopes to sell the portfolio in its entirety to a single buyer, and it is expected to award it through a competitive process that will be completed at the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017.

In an interview, the CEO of Anticipa, Eduard Mendiluce, said that the company has not yet submitted a binding offer for the portfolio, which was put up for sale just three weeks ago, but he confirmed that his firm intends to analyse the portfolio because it is very attractive.

Mendiluce commented that in the last twelve months, no large real estate portfolios have come onto the market, which he explained was due to the crisis in the financial sector, which “needs time to absorb the provisions required for foreclosed assets and non-performing loans before those assets can be sold”.

Anticipa, which has starred in some of the major operations undertaken in the sector in recent years, such as the purchase of a portfolio of non-performing mortgages from CatalunyaCaixa and the purchase of a portfolio containing property developer loans from Sareb, currently manages around €10,000 million in problem loans and owns a stock of 5,000 homes.

All of these properties have come into its possession as a result of “daciones en pago” – when the owner hands over the home to pay off his outstanding debt – and 70% of them are currently being leased out.

In fact, one of Anticipa’s objectives is to become a leading manager in the rental market in Spain.

In this sense, Mendiluce has called on the different governments to launch a “clear and convincing” aid program to support the rental market (in Spain) and place it at the level of other countries in Europe, where this way of accessing a home is much more widespread.

For example, the Director is proposing tax incentives for families who choose to rent, for renovations and for people who are unable to pay market prices.

“In short, a set of measures that incentivise private operators to back this market as an alternative for investing and managing a supply of competitive and high-quality homes”, he said.

Mendiluce added that as “large, stable and solid” companies emerge with a stock of high-quality and attractive homes for rent for families, so demand will consolidate in Spain, just like it has done in other European countries, such as Germany and United Kingdom, where several large, listed and unlisted, companies operate with thousands of rental properties on their balance sheets.

“In addition to the aspects of professionalisation of the sector and improvements in techniques and procedures, we need a dedicated aid program to support rental housing from the central, regional and local governments”, he said.

Anticipa is based in El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona) and currently employs 303 people.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Experts Predict Mergers Between RE Servicers

30 March 2016 – El Mundo

The real estate servicers that emerged from the financial institutions are driving housing developments, taking advantage of the recovery in the sector in areas with demand, and also the growth in rents. Experts predict that we will see mergers between these entities over the next few years in order to reduce costs.

Servihabitat, owned 51% by the TPG and 49% by CaixaBank, currently manages €51,000 million of assets for financial institutions, Sareb, investment funds, holding companies and large landowners, and whereby leads the ranking of servicers in the Spanish sector. Of the total, €21,000 million relate to financial assets and €30,000 million relate to real estate assets. The company also has 59 developments under assessment and under construction, containing more than 2,500 homes, as well as 38,000 contracts for rental assets.

The Executive Director of Servihabitat’s real estate business, Juan Carlos Álvarez, has explained that the firm has completed 18 developments containing 707 homes over the last three years. Moreover, it finishes an average of 15,000 homes per year from developers who have left projects unfinished, given that most of the financial assets that it manages relate to developers who have filed for bankruptcy; it deals with just a handful of mortgages to individuals.

Whilst at the beginning of the crisis, it was common practice to pursue court proceedings and “daciones en pago” to manage financial real estate assets, now the strategy involves making the real estate assets supplied as collateral more attractive to sell them at the best price possible, says the Director of Financial Assets, Agustín Melchor.

Solvia, the real estate arm of Banco Sabadell, has also gained a lot of weight in the multi-client servicers field, although its two main clients are the bank led by Josep Oliu and Sareb. It manages more than €28,000 million of assets, of which more than €5,300 million are financial assets, and it also manages land under development worth €4,200 million, and more than 10,000 rental properties (worth more than €2,500 million).

In the development sphere, it has constructed more than 3,400 homes since 2011 and currently has 34,426 properties up for sale, including homes (13,634), parking spaces, storerooms, retail outlets, offices, warehouses, plots of land and others, such as moorings and buildings under construction. It has 23 new property developments underway – 21 that it is constructing on behalf of clients and two that it is marketing itself – which contain more than 1,100 homes, primarily in the areas of Barcelona and Madrid, Levante and Andalucía.

Rental properties as a business

Although Servihabitat and Solvia do not own any assets themselves (they manage them on behalf of their clients), Anticipa Real Estate (owned by the fund Blackstone and created with 40,000 mortgages from CatalunyaCaixa) specialises in buying up mortgages and properties to focus on the business of rental homes. Thus, its strategy involves long-term management, rather than the liquidation of assets, and in 2015, it acquired developer loan portfolios from CaixaBank and Sareb for around €1,000 million and 5,000 homes in total; it also agreed to buy 4,500 homes from Banco Sabadell – 3,000 of which are currently rented out.

Of the portfolio of mortgages under management, 25% pay normally, whilst the remaining 75% pay with varying degrees of default. Anticipa plans to apply “dación en pago” arrangements to the majority of its problem loans. To date, it has signed 3,000 agreements in total. Following the “dación en pago”, most borrowers leave the home, but 5% remain, with a reduced rental price under a three year contract, explained the CEO of Anticipa, Eduard Mendiluce.

The future of the sector

Experts predict that there will be mergers between the servicers over the next few years, as the banks de-couple themselves from these companies and new investors look for economies of scale to reduce their costs, according to the Esade Alumni Real Estate Club. One of the first examples has been the Norwegian company Lindorff, specialist in non-performing loans and recoveries, which has acquired Aktua, the real estate services company of the former Banesto: “We expect to see more operations”, say sources at the Club.

Moreover, the distancing of the banks is going to force these companies to look for new clients and choose between offering end-to-end real estate services to third parties and becoming real estate companies. Sources at the Club expect that the major banks will sell their servicers and that over the long-term, there will end up being four operators in Spain after the concentration process: Servihabitat and Solvia, as integrated service companies and Neinor Homes (the fond owned by Lone Star) and Anticipa as real estate companies, the first focusing on development and the second on rental properties.

Original story: El Mundo

Translation: Carmel Drake