Tag: buildability

Ministry of Defence Puts Several Plots up for Sale in Madrid for €75M

10 June 2019 – Eje Prime

The Ministry of Defence is putting several plots of land up for sale on Calle Isaac Peral, 32, in Madrid, for €75 million. The deadline for bids is 3 September, and the auction will be held a fortnight later.

The plots are for residential use and the largest one has a buildability of 7,462 m2 with an asking price of €6.6 million. The smallest plot has a buildability of 3,000 m2 and an asking price of €2.6 million.

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

ZAV to Receive €15.9M from the Sale of an Intermodal Plot for 198 Homes

11 April 2019 – El Periódico 

The company Zaragoza Alta Velocidad is going to receive at least €15,972,060 from the sale of a plot of land in the future AVE neighbourhood. That is the highest price offered in the auction for the plot, known as block 6, which is located next to the Delicias intermodal station in Zaragoza.

Assuming no last minute surprises, the winner of the auction will be the company SPV Reoco 1, which is the firm behind which one of the giants of the residential property sector in Spain likes to hide, namely Aedas Homes. It will be the listed company’s first venture into Zaragoza, although it already has a presence in Madrid, Sevilla and Valencia, amongst others.

Nevertheless, according to sources close to the operation, the auction has not been closed yet, and the other two competing firms Refacleta S.L. and Innovación and Desarrollo Asistencial (de Logroño) are still in with a real chance.

The plot measures 5,821.2 m2 and has a buildability of 27,956 m2, with capacity for 198 flats. Construction on the site, the second real estate development to be built in the AVE neighbourhood, is expected to begin later this year.

Original story: El Periódico (by D. López)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Dadelos to Build a Logistics Platform in Sagunto with an Investment of €5M

16 January 2019 – Eje Prime

Dadelos is launching itself into the logistics sector in Valencia. The Valencian family group is going to build a logistics platform in Sagunto with an investment of €5 million.

The plot, which has a buildability of 13,200 m2, is located on the large format Camí la Mar I industrial and logistics park, very close to the Port of Sagunto and Parc Sagunt, an area where companies such as Inditex and Mercadona are already present.

Dadelos is going to carry out the construction of the project without having closed the future final user of the property in advance, as reported by the company in a statement. Similarly, the group stated that this operation forms part of its current expansion and diversification policy.

The new property, which will be twelve metres tall, will also have an area for office use. To carry out the transaction, Dadelos has been advised by Olivares Consultores, which confirmed that it is a strategic operation “at a time of strong growth and high demand for spaces by logistics companies in the area”.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Madrid Nuevo Norte will Generate €13.2bn of Business for the RE Sector

12 October 2018 – Eje Prime

Madrid Nuevo Norte represents good news for the Spanish real estate sector. The Town Hall led by Manuela Carmena expects the project, which received the green light at the end of September, to generate €13.2 billion of business for the real estate sector.

The urban development project, to the north of Chamartín train station, is going to house 10,485 new homes, as well as 1.5 million m2 of offices and another 103,119 m2 of commercial space. The acquisition of the plots will involve a total cost of €3.74 billion and the construction costs will exceed €2.78 billion.

The Town Hall of Madrid has confirmed that the tertiary assets will contribute the bulk of the income for the property developers that participate in the construction of Madrid Nuevo Norte. Together, the sales price of those properties will amount to €10.2 billion. In the case of the development of new homes, the business will amount to €2.98 billion, according to reports from Cinco Días.

The results of an economic study for the project show a range of returns of between 11.2% and 16.4%, although the Town Hall warns that the margin will depend heavily on factors such as the evolution of the real estate market and the acquisition price of the land. In terms of the latter, an orientative cost of €2,899.47/m2 is forecast for private housing located in the financial centre.

Following several adjustments, the total buildability of Madrid Nuevo Norte has decreased by 21%, down from 3.37 million m2 according to the initial plan to €2.66 million m2 under the current plan. In addition, the district has been divided into four areas: Chamartín station, the business centre, Fuencarral-San Roque-Tres Olivos and Fuencarral-Las Tablas. Each area will have its own construction timetable and urbanisation costs.

The project will have to be financed almost in its entirety by the landowners, who will disburse €1.2 billion on average. The Town Hall of Madrid is going to spend €307.89 million with the aim of covering the urbanisation costs, which will be added to €24.78 million from the Community of Madrid and €220.49 million from Adif, the concessionaire of the rights.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Valladolid’s Town Hall Finalises Operation to Group Together its Offices in Plaza San Pablo

18 August 2018 – El Norte de Castilla

Valladolid’s Town Hall is finalising an operation to hand over plots of land to the Ministry of Justice and group together its headquarters in San Pablo.

The buyer is a listed company and, before closing an agreement with the Town Hall, needs to obtain approval from its shareholders and from Spain’s National Securities and Exchange Commission. But the operation, which is described as “good news” for the city and the municipal coffers, is in a very advanced stage. The Town Hall is finalising the drafting of the agreement with an important company, whose name has not been disclosed, which will make it possible for the El Salvador school plot to be placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Justice so that all of the headquarters located across the city can be grouped together in the San Pablo area.

The deal will work as follows. The property development firm will acquire the plots from the owner of the former education centre, pay off a significant debt that its owners have contracted with Sareb – which is estimated to amount to €10 million – and grant the El Salvador plot to the Town Hall. In exchange, the Town Hall ‘will pay’ this plot with buildability. Specifically, almost 6,000 m2 on another “very central” plot, whose location has not been revealed for the time being.

Without legal problems

According to the local Administration, the solution will resolve all of the problems and delays that an expropriation process could involve and will include the withdrawal of legal appeals that the owner company had filed against the municipal plans.

Moreover, the Town Hall will maintain the buildability of the plots next to the Zambrana school, in the Delicias neighbourhood – plots that were going to be handed over to the owners of the school as compensation for El Salvador (…).

The plan, as announced by the mayor last week, is to sign the agreement with the buyer during the month of September (…).

Original: El Norte de Castilla (by J. Asua)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Town Hall of Madrid Criticised for Selling Plot Reportedly Worth €48M for €16M

18 April 2018 – La Vanguardia

The PSOE has denounced the Government of Manuela Carmena for breaching the agreed budget for 2017 and “the most basic municipal obligation” with its sale of a plot in Carabanchel for €16 million. It alleges that the sale was a “total waste”, given that the site was reportedly worth €48 million, up to three times more.

The socialist councillor, Mercedes González, condemned the delegate for Sustainable Urban Development (DUS), José Manuel Calvo, for the sale of the plot measuring 38,140 m2, which had belonged to the EMT, for a “modicum sum” in an auction in which the property developer Pryconsa participated on its own.

The plot is located on Avenida de Carabanchel, 21, in the district of Carabanchel, in a privileged location in the opinion of the PSOE – the investiture partner of Ahora Madrid – where a significant number of social housing properties could have been built.

The socialist spokesperson on the committee denounced that the plot had been sold with the knowledge and consent of the delegate, whose team also supported the “enormous” growth of the buildability from 2,600 m2 to 27,000 m2 (…).

The plot was sold for €427/m2, or €16 million in total, even though, according to the IBI (Property Tax) charge, the cadastral value of the site is €48 million (…).

In the face of these complaints, the councillor José Manuel Calvo defended that he had not intervened in the process or the sale decision (…).

The deal between PSOE and Ahora Madrid for the 2017 budgets established that the Town Hall would not sell any of its land or properties.

Original story: La Vanguardia

Translation: Carmel Drake

Operación Chamartín Receives the Green Light for 10,500 Homes

17 April 2018 – El País

The Ministry of Development, the Town Hall of Madrid and the property developer Distrito Castellana Norte have reached an agreement to give the green light to Operación Chamartín, the largest urban planning project in Madrid. After more than two decades of blockades, the new plan reduces the buildability of the previous projects, with the construction of 10,510 homes in the north of the capital, 6,500 fewer than initially planned, plus a large business centre and the remodelling of the train station.

The Minister for Development, Íñigo de la Serna (pictured above), confirmed on Tuesday, that his Ministry, the Town Hall of Madrid and the property developer Distrito Castellana Norte had finally reached an agreement to initiate the procedures for the modification of the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) of the Madrid Nuevo Norte project, known as Operación Chamartín.

In this way, the largest urban development plan in Madrid has been unblocked (at least on paper) after 25 years of obstacles and litigation cases under different governments, both from the Central Executive as well as from the Town Hall of Madrid, although the building work will not start for several years.

The project is a modification of the agreement principle reached last July, but with significant changes, such as a 6% reduction in the buildability, down from 2.83 million m2 to 2.66 million m2. Compared to the size of the project when Ana Botella was leader of the Town Hall in 2015 (3.37 million m2), the decrease in buildability amounts to more than 26% (…).

Details

20% of the homes will be subsidised (2,100 homes), double the minimum established by law, and the Town Hall led by Manuela Carmena has already announced that it will allocate the cession of use that corresponds to it to social housing. Moreover, a business centre spanning 1 million m2 is going to be built and Chamartín train station will be renovated, with the permission of Adif, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Development.

De la Serna explained that the documentation to begin the processing of the project was registered on Monday with a document that seeks to give the green light to this urban transformation, which means that in July, the initial approval will be received and the process will be completed by the end of the year (…).

Original story: El País (by Ramón Muñoz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Adif Has c. 80 Homes & Land Up For Sale Worth €10M

14 January 2018 – Cuatro

The state-owned company is taking advantage of the recovery in the sector by selling properties; and is also hanging the “for rent” sign up on around fifty other premises. 

Adif, the public company responsible for promoting and managing Spain’s railway network, has around eighty real estate assets up for sale, primarily homes and land, spread across several Spanish provinces, whose prices amount to a total of €9.8 million.

The public company, which forms part of the Ministry of Development, is whereby pushing ahead with its divestment policy of assets that are not necessary for its railway activity, to coincide with the recovery in the real estate sector.

By virtue of this strategy, Adif is selling or transferring the management of assets not affected by its core business, the construction and management of railway lines, with the objective of optimising the management of its real estate portfolio and obtaining additional resources to continue investing in the railway network.

Within the framework of this policy, the company chaired by Juan Bravo has also put 56 commercial premises up for rent. The properties are located in a total of 16 provinces, according to data from the company compiled by Europa Press.

In terms of the homes up “for sale”, they are assets that were left unselected in previous auctions. The flats are located in towns or capitals of thirteen provinces and their sales prices range between €16,000 for a home in Venta de Baños (Palencia) and €131,000 for another home located in Jérez de la Frontera (Cádiz).

Nevertheless, the assets that Adif is looking to sell include several noteworthy plots of land, specifically, six in Madrid and one in Leganés.

Plots in Madrid, the jewel in the crown

The latter is the most extensive, given that it is an urban plot measuring 3,608 m2, with a maximum buildability of 5,232.26 m2. It has been put up for sale for €2.14 million.

Other assets include homes in Jérez de Frontera, measuring between 72 m2 and 99 m2, with two or three bedrooms and a parking space, with prices of between €90,000 and €131,000, as well as several commercial premises in Valencia capital.

The rest of the homes for sale, which are either new or in need of work, are located in the provinces of A Coruña, Ávila, Ciudad Real, León, Ourense, Palencia, Salamanca, Tarragona, Valladolid and Zaragoza.

Adif is adding this new round of divestments to those undertaken in previous years. In the real estate sphere, at the end of 2014, it sold a plot of land on Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid through a public auction. That site was awarded to El Corte Inglés for €136 million and is located right next to the retailer’s largest store in the country.

Two years later, the real estate company Vía Célere purchased a plot from Adif, and also from Repsol, which those two companies jointly owned in the Méndez Álvaro area of the capital for €29.1 million.

Beyond this sector, a few years ago, Adif granted concessions for the management of the parking lots in its train stations and of its fibre optic network, one of the largest in the country. The first was awarded to Saba and the second to REE.

Original story: Cuatro

Translation: Carmel Drake

Atlético De Madrid Wants To Sell Operación Calderón Land For €3,300/m2

10 November 2017 – Cinco Días

Atlético de Madrid is looking to shake up the real estate sector with a record-breaking operation. The club is heating up the housing market with an operation to sell the plots on the site of its former Vicente Calderón stadium, through which it wants to achieve much higher prices than are currently being paid for land in the surrounding area.

The club, chaired by Enrique Cerezo and controlled by Miguel Ángel Gil, has engaged the consultancy firm CBRE to sell the plots of land, and the first round of offers have already been received. Atlético has already been sounding out potential buyers regarding a land asking price of €3,300/m2, according to four companies in the real estate sector, which would represent a record in this part of the Spanish capital.

That high land value would mean that the houses built on the site would have to be sold for approximately €6,000/m2, according to the calculations performed by several sources. That figure is equivalent to other more expensive areas in the capital and represents almost twice the current sales price of new build homes in the district of Arganzuela, where the stadium is located. According to the appraisal company Tinsa, new homes in this neighbourhood are currently being sold for prices ranging between €3,000/m2 and €4,000/m2, based on data as at 2017.

Specifically, Atlético is selling three plots of land, which have a total surface area of 63,076 m2, of which 57,094 m2 corresponds to residential use and the remaining 5,892 m2 to commercial use. Around 500 homes are expected to be built on the site. If the club manages to find a buyer willing to pay €3,300/m2, it will receive proceeds of €210 million. If the price ends up being €3,000/m2, the purchaser will have to spend around €190 million.

This urban planning operation is linked to the club’s change of stadium after it moved this season from its former pitch next to the Manzanares River to the new Wanda Metropolitan (…). Moreover, the football team needs to sell these plots to repay Inbursa – owned by the magnate Carlos Slim – for a €160 million loan that it was granted to build its new stadium.

The so-called Operación Mahou-Calderón, which also includes the adjacent plots on the site of the former brewery headquarters- but which are not included in the sale now being undertaken by Atlético – was approved by the municipal plenary in September. The buildability of that environment has decreased from 175,000 m2 to 147,000 m2 with respect to Ana Botella’s plan dated 2014.

Sources in the sector explain that CBRE has already received at least five offers during the first phase of the process, which is expected to close at the beginning of 2018. For the time being, it is not known whether any of these bids exceeds the figure of €3,000/m2 that Atleti is looking for (…).

Sources at the real estate consultancy firm Knight Frank calculate that the price of land in this neighbourhood amounts to a maximum of between €2,400/m2 and €2,800/m2. They explain that recent similar purchases in the district of Arganzuela, in the Méndez Álvaro area, for example, were closed for a price of between €2,000/m2 and €2,220/m2.

However, some experts in the residential market do believe that the €3,000/m2 threshold may be broken due to the high purchase pressure currently in play, primarily due to interest from international funds. They also consider that these plots are very attractive, located as they are in the Madrid Río area, and so they expect the degree of interest in them to be high.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the river, in the Usera area, Neinor Homes is marketing quite an exclusive development called Riverside at prices that exceed €4,000/m2, according to the portal Fotocasa, and the penthouses are going for €6,000/m2.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Valdebebas: Carmena Cuts 160 Homes & Insists On Social Housing

16 February 2017 – El Confidencial

Fewer homes and no unsubsidised properties. That is the condition that the Town Hall of Madrid has put on the table to unblock the “commercial pill” of Valdebebas, the last plot of land in the area that is still waiting to receive the necessary administrative and legal blessings before the cranes can move in.

On Tuesday, the Town Hall presented its buildable surface area and density proposals for the area, where 1,000 homes were going to be constructed on a plot that was initially going to house the largest shopping centre in Europe.

As expected, the Town Hall has reduced the buildable surface area, although by more than initially expected. Specifically, it has reduced the space allocated to residential use by 18,000 m2, an adjustment that affects almost all of the 14 plots (around 16,000 m2) that Pryconsa acquired from the Compensation Board last year.

The direct consequence of this change is that the company owned by the Colomer family is going to have to recalculate its figures and construct between 140 and 160 fewer homes. This represents a reduction of just over 15% compared to the number initially proposed, all of which were going to be social housing properties.

The other major loser under the Town Hall’s proposal is Premier, the owner of a plot of land allocated for unsubsidised housing, with a buildable surface area of almost 11,000 m2. The Town Hall has said that it must now build in accordance with some kind of protected housing scheme, as well as reduce its buildable surface area by 2,000 m2.

By contrast, the Joyfe College and the Valdecam Cooperative, which acquired land on which to construct 65 social housing properties, will not have to make any changes to their plans (…).

Next steps

After its meeting with the Town Hall on Tuesday, the Valdebebas Compensation Board, which represents almost 5,000 owners in the area, will present the Town Hall’s proposal to its governing board. That body, in which only large landowners participate, may opt to take a decision or may refer it to the assembly, so that all of the owners, and not just the large ones, take the decision.

The problem that the Compensation Board now faces is that it has to reduce the price at which it sold its plots to Pryconsa and Premier, given that the use and buildable surface area of those plots has been modified. This means that it will have fewer resources to allocate to all of the social service works – healthcare, education, sports facilities – that are required in the area. (…) This new proposal emerged after the ruling from the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) last year, which overturned the special plan for the area.

It is possible that the Compensation Board will reject the Town Hall’s plan and wait until the Supreme Court makes its ruling regarding the TSJ’s ruling. The problem is that, if it endorses the existing ruling, it will return to the initial situation, in other words, no homes will be built at all, given that the 109,000 m2 in this area were initially designated for the construction of a large shopping centre.

That would mean having to start conversations with the Town Hall from scratch, whereby further delaying the resolution of the problem. It would also have to deal with land buyers invoking clauses that allow them to break contracts and deprive the whole neighbourhood of a new school that the almost 10,000 residents are anxiously awaiting, given the lack of educational provisions in the area.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake