Knight Frank: Inv’t in Logistics Will Amount to €1.2bn in 2017

4 December 2017 – Eje Prime

The Spanish logistics sector is on the right track as the industry approaches the centres of the country’s largest cities. The new methods of consumption, which demand greater speed when it comes to receiving a product and the increase in the volume of online purchases, has led to a rise in the leasing of logistics land in Spain, in particular in the regional capitals. During the nine months to September, investment in the market amounted to €550 million and that figure is forecast to reach €1.2 billion before the end of the year.

Spain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing at a rate of 3% p.a., and the index is not escaping the gaze of international investors, who are placing their trust in the country. This has been demonstrated by the largest logistics operation recorded so far this year involving P3 Logistics Parks, the developer controlled by the sovereign fund of Singapur GIC, which paid €243 million for GreenOak’s logistics portfolio in April, according to a report from the consultancy firm Knight Frank.

In addition to Madrid and Barcelona, several other large regional capitals have benefitted from the investments made in the purchase of industrial land on the outskirts of cities. Such is the case of Valencia, in the adjoining town of Ribarroja, where the largest operation was signed during the third quarter of the year. There, TH Real Estate acquired a Carrefour logistics platform measuring 55,000 m2, on a plot with a surface area spanning 87,000 m2.

Focusing on the Community of Madrid, the report points out that the absorption of logistics space has soared this year. The figures for the third quarter of the year, when 675,000 m2 of space was leased, exceed the surface area recorded during the whole of 2016 in the Spanish region. The international consultancy firm forecasts that Madrid will close the year with absorbed logistics surface area of around 800,000 m2.

The large deals notably drove the increase in the surface area leased in the country. Seven of the transactions signed in the sector during 2017 involved assets spanning more than 40,000 m2.

Prime yields, on the rise in Madrid and Barcelona 

In a survey of international investors conducted by Knight Frank, 51% of those questioned chose industrial and logistics assets as their preferred asset type for investment over the next five years. This investor appetite has led to an increase in the price of Spanish industrial land. Prices in the logistics market are on the rise, although yields are remaining stable.

In the market for logistics assets in Madrid, prime rents amount to around €5.25/m2. The forecasts indicate that the increase in demand and the improvement in the quality of new logistics facilities will lead to an average annual increase in rental prices in the region of around 3%.

Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the price of prime logistics land is even more expensive at around €6.85/m2. If we look at a map of Europe, the Catalan capital is the seventh most expensive city, and the most expensive, by far, in the south of the continent. In this sense, Barcelona, where land is already more expensive than it is in Frankfurt (€6.65/m2), is only exceeded by Amsterdam (€7.10/m2), Munich (€7.10/m2), Dublin (€8.15/m2), Helsinki (€10/m2), Geneva (€14.55) and London (€15.25/m2).

Original story: Eje Prime (by Jabier Izquierdo)

Translation: Carmel Drake