AURA News Real Estate

Agartha Real Estate Socimi to Debut on the Euronext Access in July

4 June 2019 – Eje Prime

Agartha Real Estate Socimi is getting ready to make its debut on the Euronext Access platform in July, with an estimated valuation of €28 million.

The co-working and co-living specialist will make its debut with a portfolio of three flexible office spaces in Madrid, located on Calle Piamonte, 23, Calle Serrano Anguita, 13 and Calle Javier Ferrero, 10.

The company is owned by the Venezuelan businessman Miguel Ángel Capriles, a relative of the opposition leader Henrique Capriles and director of Abanca.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Temprano Capital Appoints Livensa Living to Help with Marketing, Sales & Operations

22 April 2019 – Press Release

Temprano Capital Partners, in partnership with CPA®:18 – Global and Carey European Student Housing Fund I, LP, has appointed Livensa Living, powered by CRM Students, to undertake marketing, sales and operations for their openings in 2019 in Barcelona and Porto.

Livensa Living is an Iberian based sales and marketing platform focused on student accommodation.

CRM Students is a leading, international student accommodation manager operating over 50 student residences, totalling more than 23,000 beds.

With this appointment, Temprano Capital Partners, as developer and co-investor with CPA®:18 – Global for Barcelona and Carey European Student Housing Fund I, LP for Porto, aims to provide best in class management solutions and student experiences across its growing portfolio of operating assets.

Temprano Capital Partners currently comprises a portfolio of 10 projects, either operating or under development, across Iberia’s best university cities and 3,500 rooms. It aims to double this number over 3 years.

CPA®:18 – Global and Carey European Student Housing Fund I, LP are currently developing 8,500 beds across 19 properties in Spain and Portugal.

Both projects, Livensa Living U. Porto Campus and Livensa Living Barcelona Diagonal Alto, will be inaugurated in September 2019.

Livensa Living Barcelona Diagonal Alto, acquired in 2017, benefits from a privileged location 10 minutes from UB Barcelona University and UPC via a 24/7 tram service and adjacent to the Finistrelles Shopping Centre. This location will allow the residence to address the unsatisfied accommodation needs of students studying at various universities and educational facilities in Barcelona.

The project will have 372 premium studios in a 10,500 sqm building. In addition to its superior common areas, the property has an incredible roof terrace which will include a chill-out area, a secret garden, an open-air gym and yoga space, a premium bar, an outdoor concert stage and an infinity swimming pool benefitting from amazing, panoramic views across the city of Barcelona.

Livensa Living Porto Campus, also acquired in 2017, is located on Rua Dr. Manuel Pereira da Silva in Porto. It is strategically located in Asprela´s University Campus accounting for approximately 75% of all university students in Porto. The residence is located next to the metro station Universidade making it a superbly connected site.

The project will provide 580 premium studios in a building of two wings 20,000 sqm with a large landscaped central courtyard housing a landscaped garden, a gym and yoga area, a large terrace with bar and a swimming pool.

Original story: Press Release

Edited by: Carmel Drake

Co-living Brand Quarters Expands Into Spain and Portugal

25 March 2019 – Press Release

The MEDICI LIVING Group, the leading co-living provider in Europe and the U.S, is expanding into Spain and Portugal. It has therefore appointed Nicolas Dugerdil (pictured below) as Director Expansion Iberia. Based in Barcelona, he will be spearheading the group’s expansion and roll-out of the QUARTERS co-living brand in the region. He will identify locations and secure buildings, with an initial focus on Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon. Other cities are to follow once a foothold has been established.

Dugerdil moves over to MEDICI LIVING from the Spanish Inditex Group where he most recently held the position of Expansion Director for Uterqüe, managing the fast-growing premium fashion brand’s entire real estate portfolio and leading its international development. Between 2013 and 2016, as Expansion Manager for Switzerland, Dugerdil built up Inditex’s network of stores in the country, and between 2012 and 2013 was part of the core team rolling-out the global Radio Frequency Identification project, a technology that has had a huge impact on the retail sector. He holds an MBA from the IESE Business School.

“We want to become the WeWork of co-living in the coming years. Iberia is another important step on this journey,” says MEDICI LIVING founder and CEO Gunther Schmidt. “Home prices in both Spain and Portugal have been rising steadily in major cities over the last few years, so that affordable housing for young professionals has become scarce. With our QUARTERS concept, we will be offering just the right community and living space to fill the current supply gap.”

The company has ambitious plans for Iberia. Up to 20 percent of the roll-out funding provided by CORESTATE Capital is to be invested in Spain and Portugal adding up to 1,200 co-living beds in these two countries.

The QUARTERS brand, with its high-end furnishings and a comprehensive digital concept, is specifically targeted at young professionals from the millennial generation. The brand’s rollout across Europe has accelerated since the end of last year when MEDICI LIVING and Frankfurt-listed CORESTATE Capital Holding, one of the region’s largest real estate investment managers, agreed on a cooperation to invest €1bn of equity and debt in the coliving sector over the next three to five years.

The programme marks the largest planned investment in the history of the young asset class worldwide. A similar cooperation was agreed with the W5 Group, the family office of Ralph Winter, which aims to invest $300m in the US. MEDICI LIVING expects the addition of at least 7,300 further rooms to its portfolio until 2023. The company currently operates 1,800.

Original story: Press Release

Edited by: Carmel Drake

Marco Aldany Founder Seeks Financial Partner for his Coliving Business

26 February 2019 – Idealista

(…). One of the founders of the chain of hairdressers Marco Aldany is strengthening his commitment to the real estate sector and, following the success of his student residence business, MiCasaInn, is raising the stakes with a search for financial partners to develop a coliving company in Madrid. According to explanations provided by Alejandro Fernández-Luengo to Idealista, the company already has three buildings in the centre of the capital that it could dedicate to this segment, although it wants a financial partner to help its growth across the rest of Spain.

This new venture into the coliving sector will arrive in the form of a spin-off. “After positioning ourselves as one of the main companies specialising in students housing in Spain through MiCasaInn, we believe that the natural step is to pilot a project for young people who have finished studying and who are joining the work place, so that they can continue with us”, said Fernández-Luengo.

Currently, the company has a portfolio of assets in which it has invested more than €50 million, in the hope of launching this project. It has one building in Plaza de Canalejas, measuring 4,500 m2, another in Puerta del Sol, spanning 7,000 m2 and a third in Chueca, which could become the group’s first coliving spaces once its new brand has been launched (…).

Original story: Idealista (by Custodio Pareja)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Barcelona Gets Ready for the Residential Equivalent of Coworking: ‘Coliving’

29 January 2019 – Idealista

Whilst last year, coworking was one of the most repeated words, this year, it seems that the residential equivalent is on everyone’s lips, specifically, the new formulae for housing, ‘coliving’. So much so that Barcelona is already preparing to receive the first operators: the Consortium of the Zona Franca, a public entity tasked with the economic revitalisation of the city of Barcelona and its metropolitan area, is already managing licences to open the first coliving centres in the La Marina neighbourhood.

Although the names of the firms that are going to make their debuts in Spain under this model are unknown for the time being, sources in the sector say that they have already started to process the first permits for projects that are in an initial phase. “Just like coworking has become a successful phenomenon for the office market in Spain over the last 2 years, so professionalised coliving wants to follow in its footsteps and try its luck in the residential market”, explain sources at the real estate consultancy firm Forcadell.

“The large international investment funds, in their search for alternative assets that offer higher returns, are studying the Spanish market to implement this model, which has already proved successful in other countries such as the USA, Germany, the UK and Japan (Tokyo)”, say the sources at Forcadell.

With their arrival, these operators will professionalise a common practice in Spain of house sharing, by adding sophisticated aspects more typical of student halls. The coliving projects that have been developed to date comprise complexes with bedrooms and individual bathrooms on the one side and large common areas with movie theatres and games rooms (with ping pong, pool. etc.), libraries, gyms, restaurants and swimming pools, amongst others, on the other side.

According to Toni López, Partner at Forcadell and Director of the company’s real estate area, “the millenials have changed the way of consuming and have championed a change of thinking around property ownership, experience and use; it is logical and inevitable that this trend will expand to the real estate sector”. They are a generation that values experiences and seeks to optimise resources to the max, paying only for the use and experience of an asset, without incurring the cost and hassle involved with its ownership.

Medici and Corestate, the first brave players

Medici and Corestate have become the first groups to look closely at Spain for their new homes under the coliving formula (…). The German company Medici has joined forces with the German fund Corestate to invest more than €1 million in the development of business across all of Europe. In the Spanish market, the company will operate under the Quarters brand and it is already negotiating its first coliving project in Barcelona (…).

Medici already has three coliving buildings in Berlin, with capacity for 45 residents and nine apartments; and two more in the USA, in cities such as New York and Chicago, where the monthly rents range between USD 1,100 (€967) and USD 1,500 (€1,320) (…).