Aticco Grows in Barcelona and Plans Debut in Madrid for Next Year

24 September 2019 – The Barcelona-based co-working firm Aticco is forecasting total revenues of approximately five million euros this year as it plans to expand to Madrid in 2020. Aticco expects to close out the year with a portfolio of leased space totalling 26,000 square meters. That figure includes its most recently negotiated space: 5,500 m2 at Avenida Josep Tarradellas 123, in Barcelona.

The firm will also open a new 6,300-m2 space at Calle Pallars, 108, this week. The fully leased offices include more than 700 square meters of open areas and common spaces, with a gym, meeting rooms, auditoriums, event spaces and a cafeteria.

Original Story: Eje Prime – Marta Casado Pla

Adaptation/Translation: Richard D. K. Turner

 

Impact Hub Opens its 4th Co-Working in Madrid Spanning 2,300 m2

28 November 2018 – Eje Prime

Impact Hub is expanding in Madrid. The co-working company has just opened its fourth centre in the Spanish capital, a space spanning 2,300 m2 in the Justicia neighbourhood, which is home to 250 work spaces. It is the company’s second opening in the city so far this year, according to a statement by Impact Hub.

The co-working office is located in the Barceló area, in the heart of Madrid, and is distributed over three storeys. In addition to the work spaces, the property houses fourteen meeting rooms of varying sizes for events and meetings.

This new opening follows another that the company completed in April in Chueca, where it has a centre spanning 2,000 m2 on Calle Piamonte. Nevertheless, the company’s expansion activity will not end with this fourth centre.

During the first quarter of 2019, Impact Hub will open its fifth centre in Madrid in Torre Picasso, as revealed by Eje Prime. That co-working office will occupy 2,000 m2 of space in the property owned by Pontegadea, which has leased the commercial premises in the iconic skyscraper to the company.

When it opens in Torre Picasso, the company will have more than 9,000 m2 of flexible office space and will positioned as the fourth player in the co-working sector in Spain. The company’s first two centres are located in the Las Letras neighbourhood.

Antonio González, Director General of Impact Hub Madrid, highlights that his company aspires to be “a bridge between diverse organisations to join efforts and talent towards a common goal: that of generating a positive impact from the field of entrepreneurship and innovation.

In Madrid and Barcelona alone, the market for co-working offices grew by 71% to September, according to data from a report about flexible working spaces compiled by the consultancy firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Urbania’s Subsidiary, Syllabus, Invests €10M in New Student Residence in Málaga

13 June 2018 – Eje Prime

Syllabus is on a roll and is in the process of preparing its fifth project in Spain. In its latest project, the subsidiary of Urbania is going to build a new hall of residence for students in the historical centre of Málaga, with an investment plan worth €10 million. The asset will have 143 rooms, according to a statement issued by the company.

The company is going to construct the building from scratch and once completed, in 2020, it will have a surface area of 4,600 m2. The property chosen by Syllabus is located at number 12 Calle Cerrojo, very close to Museo Picasso and to Málaga Cathedral.

The hall of residence will have a central courtyard around which the rooms will be distributed, along with study areas, coworking spaces, games rooms, a cafeteria and a gym. Moreover, the asset will have an outdoor recreation area on the roof.

Urbania’s subsidiary, created recently under the leadership of Jeffrey Sújar, has €200 million to invest in halls of residence for students across Europe. The aim of the company is to generate up to 4,000 beds in the continent’s main university cities.

Since starting life, Syllabus now has five sites under development in Spain comprising 1,200 beds in Málaga, Madrid and Valencia. Moreover, it is planning to acquire new assets in other university cities, including Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla and Salamanca.

For its operations in Spain, the company has signed a strategic agreement with an operator that specialises in the student resident market, Mi Casa Inn, which has more than 600 rooms under management.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Co-Working Operators Leased 5-Times More Office Space in 2017

8 February 2018 – Expansión

Operators of co-working offices are gaining strength in Spain and multiplied by five times the space leased in 2017, to 40,500 m2.

The international co-working giants –WeWork, Regus, Glue Concept and Busining– are claiming their space in Spain and have recorded a milestone in the leasing of co-working office space in Madrid and Barcelona.

Last year, 40,500 m2 was leased for use by these kinds of work spaces, which represents a five-fold increase in the figure recorded the previous year, according to explanations provided by the real estate consultancy firm Savills Aguirre Newman.

Sources at the consultancy firm explain that the arrival of international operators has definitively reactivated the so-called serviced office sector in Spain, which includes business centres and co-working spaces.

Specifically, Regus, WeWork, Busining and Glue Concept closed 15 office space rental operations in Spain last year. Those operators opted for new and renovated buildings, with large and bright spaces, locations that are well-connected by public transport and with excellent services for their users in the vicinity of the offices, explained Ana Zavala, National Director of the Offices Agency at Savills Aguirre Newman.

By city, Madrid accounted for 82% of the surface area leased, whilst Barcelona represented 18%. By number of operations, 53% corresponded to Madrid, compared with 47% to Barcelona.

For the consultancy firm, the participation of this new model in the global office calculation for Madrid and Barcelona still has room for growth, as it currently accounts for around 5%. Thus, whilst in Madrid and Barcelona, the leasing by these types of business accounted for 3% in 2016, in London, they represented 10%.

“The growth in terms of leasing has been very significant in 2017, but the model is still very new in Madrid and Barcelona, and will depend on the success and demand that is generated. London is a much more mature market in terms of co-working in Europe and there the market share has amounted to around 9%-10% of the volume leased over the last two years”, said Zavala.

For the National Director of the Offices Agency at Savills Aguirre Newman, the benefits of these spaces are attractive for SMEs and micro-companies used to working in a collaborative way (…).

New players

In an effort to take advantage of the new needs in the market, the large Spanish Socimis Colonial and Merlin have also taken their first steps into this business. In this way, in October, the Catalan Socimi closed an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in the co-working platform Utopic_US. That agreement also includes the development of a strategic plan through successive capital injections by Colonial. Utopic_US, founded by 2010, has three centres in Madrid and will open another one in Barcelona within the next few weeks.

Also in October, Merlin announced the purchase of a stake in Loom House. In the case of the Socimi led by Ismael Clemente, its alliance with Loom House involves jointly converting some of the buildings in Merlin’s portfolio into co-working office spaces. Loom House currently has two co-working centres in Madrid, one in the Atocha area and another on Calle Huertas.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Insur Launches Its Co-Working Business With 1,800m2 Space In Sevilla

17 October 2017 – Eje Prime

Insur is moving into the co-working sector. The Andalucían real estate company has launched an iSspsaces business centre in Sevilla. The building, which has a surface area of 1,800 m2, contains 30 offices, three meeting rooms and one training room with capacity for 80 people. With this move, the group is following in the footsteps of WeWork and Spaces, which have both opened their first centres in Spain in the last month.

This is the first space of its kind in Andalucía, “a place adapted to the new needs of companies that are looking to bring themselves in line with current models of working”, explains the Director of Insur, Alejandro Fernández.

According to Fernández, “the total saving in terms of investment in this business centre compared to a traditional office is 84.7%”. The offices measure 5nm2 each, with space for between one and ten desks.

iSspaces is located in the Edificio Insur, on Avenida de Diego Martínez Barrio 10, in Sevilla, next to some of the city’s strategic transport hubs, such as the San Bernardo metro and train station, several bus stops, the Santa Justa train station and with fast access to the motorways linking with Málaga, Cádiz and Huelva.

The co-working business is entering Spain with a vengeance in 2017, as shown by several investments undertaken in recent months in Barcelona and Madrid. In the Catalan capital in September, the North American multinational WeWork, which specialises in the management of coworking spaces, leased an office building in the 22@ district of Barcelona, thanks to an agreement signed between the real estate developer Grupo Castellví and the real estate funds Stoneweg and 1810 Capital Investments, according to Eje Prime. Moreover, during the same month, the company also signed a lease for another property in Madrid, owned by Colonial, on Paseo de la Castellana.

Similarly, another company in the sector, Spaces, has opened an office measuring 1,500 m2 in the centre of Madrid, on Calle Manzanares, whilst it awaits the opening of its first centre in Barcelona, in the 22@ district.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

The Alternative Asset Boom: Student Halls, Co-Working Spaces & Data Centres Are On The Rise

26 September 2017 – Eje Prime

2017 is going to be remembered in the real estate sector as the year of alternative assets. A large number of corporate operations in the student housing segment and healthcare sector means that investors are looking more carefully at these products. So much so that 44% of international investors say that they plan to spend money acquiring these kinds of assets over the next few years.

One of the main reasons for focusing on these types of investments is geographical behaviour and demand, important for 69% of the international funds surveyed. The next most important reason, for 46% of investors, is the stability of the returns from such investments, according to the Emerging Trends Europe 2017 study prepared by PwC. Diversification and high yields are also reasons for 46% and 45% of investors, respectively, according to the findings of the report.

For 61% of investors, the student housing business has one of the most promising outlooks, in that case, due to the demand from the demographics. “It is important to highlight that this looks like being a secular trend rather than a cyclical one”, explain sources at PwC.

Nevertheless, the corporate operations that have been carried out in recent months in the sector support this trend. The most recent saw Azora, Artá Capital, March Campus (Banca March’s client investor vehicle) and Mutua Madrileña, reach an agreement to sell Grupo Resa to a group of international investors, represented by Axa and CBRE. Even so, and although these kinds of assets are on the rise, only 23% of the funds specialising in real estate hold such properties in their portfolios.

After student halls of residence come hotels. 51% of investors have either acquired or have been exploring the possibility of investing in this kind of asset. In Spain, the Socimi Hispania has decided to specialise in this type of asset, whereby positioning itself as one of the largest companies in the hotel segment in the country.

Nursing homes for the elderly and clinics (healthcare) have also been gaining in importance during 2017 and will be the assets to watch in coming years (…).

One recent operation involving this kind of asset in Spain saw Healthcare Activos Investment acquire the Los Tilos nursing home for €15.5 million, in a transaction brokered by BNP Paribas Real Estate (…).

The most alternative assets

Within the group of alternative investments identified by PwC are some that break the mould due to their lack of history in the real estate sector. One of them is shared offices, also known as co-working spaces. In recent months, they have sparked interest amongst investors of all kinds, with operators such as WeWork and Spaces leading the way (…).

Last week, Spaces, an international workspace company, announced that it is going to open an office measuring 1,511 m2 in Madrid, at number 4 Calle Manzanares, known by the group as Spaces Rio. And within the next few weeks, it will open a new Spaces centre in Barcelona (in the 22@ district).

Meanwhile, WeWork confirmed its arrival in Spain earlier this month. The company, which specialises in the management of coworking spaces, has leased an office building in the 22@ district in Barcelona (…).

Finally, data centres, where data servers are managed and stored, have also seen their profile rise in the real estate business. These types of asset, which are mostly located on the outskirts of major cities, are expected to capture the attention of 15% of investors this year (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake