Tag: construction companies

Quabit Finalises Sale of Rayet Construcción for €14.3 Million

9 October 2019 – Quabit has finalised its acquisition of 82.9% of the share capital of Rayet Construcción, a construction company controlled by Félix Abánades, for 14.3 million euros. Quabit is thought to be taking control of the construction in response to tight demand and to guarantee the construction and delivery of its homes.

The president of Rayet, Félix Abánades, will thereby raise his stake in Quabit from 19.1% to 20.3%, as part of the payment will be made with shares in the developer. The rest of the payment will be made in cash.

Original Story: Valencia Plaza

Photo: Eva Máñez

Adaptation/Translation: Richard D. K. Turner

INE: 25% More Companies Operating in the RE Sector in 1 Year

25 June 2018 – Eje Prime

The new bonanza phase in the real estate sector is triggering the constitution of new companies and, in just one year, Spain registered 33,503 more companies dedicated to real estate activities. According to the latest structural survey of companies in the service sector of Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), the sector contained a total of 169,031 companies in 2016, which represents an increase of 24.7% in just one year.

The property rental segment was a net generator of new companies. Specifically, companies dedicated to the rental of real estate assets increased by 24.3%, to more than 119,400 companies. By contrast, the number of companies dedicated to property sales fell by 10% to just 926 companies.

Similarly, companies undertaking real estate activity on behalf of third parties amounted to a total of 48,665 in 2016, which represents an increase of 26.7% in the census of companies dedicated to this activity in just one year.

The significant increase in the number of companies was not accompanied in 2016 by an analogous increase in the turnover of companies in the real estate sector, although the trend was positive. For the whole of the sector, revenues amounted to €25.7 billion, up by 5.4% compared to the previous year.

Curiously, despite the boom in the constitution of companies, the revenues of rental property companies stagnated: all of the active companies in the sector recorded turnover of €17.5 billion in 2016, down by 0.8%.

By contrast, whilst some of the active companies disappeared, the aggregate turnover of the companies dedicated to the sale and purchase of properties soared by 42.5% to €1.7 billion.

Generation of employment, on the rise 

INE’s data also reflects the evolution of the personnel employed by service companies. In this case, the real estate sector as a whole saw its total workforce rise by 15.3% in 2016, to 238,428 workers.

Of that figure, companies dedicated to the sale and purchase of properties accounted for just 2,264 workers, compared to the 142,378 employees who were working for property rental companies.

In terms of real estate activities for third parties, the number of employees amounted to 93,786 people, up by 18.4% compared to a rise in turnover of 16.4% to €6.6 billion.

Original story: Eje Prime (by C. De Angelis)

Translation: Carmel drake

Savills: Occupancy Rate of Málaga’s Prime Offices Reaches 90%

15 March 2018 – Eje Prime

The sun is shining over the office market in Málaga once again. The capital of the Costa del Sol achieved an occupancy rate of 90% in its prime office area, a figure that has not been seen since the start of the crisis.

The Málagan office market experienced significant demand last year in the central and financial districts of the city. In both areas, there was a notable reduction in office stock and rental prices rose to €18/m2 on the central street Calle Larios, according to a report from Savills Aguirre Newman.

In addition to Calle Larios, thoroughfares such as Corte-Inglés-Vialia recorded an increase in rents for spaces in the area up to €13/m2-€14/m2.

The main driver of the office market in 2017 was, precisely, the real estate sector. It was followed by technology companies, which, as usual, requested space in the most central parts of the city for offices with surface areas of less than 1,000 m2. Nevertheless, the tech companies that needed more space opened their offices in the Andalucía Technological Park in Málaga, according to the study.

Construction companies, law firms and telemarketing companies are also players with significant demand in the city’s office market, in which Savills Aguirre Newman has brokered operations spanning more than 10,000 m2 of office space over the last 15 months.

The consultancy firm indicates, moreover, that this trend is going to continue in 2018, which means that buildings that have been available for almost a decade will finally be occupied by new tenants. This growth in demand will lead to a record volume in terms of the number of rental transactions in the Málaga office park.

For this reason, Savills Aguirre Newman considers that, given the positive trend for the next few months in the office market, there is a need to develop new projects and to convert existing spaces in order to expand the office stock in Málaga. The Head of the Office Market at the consultancy firm in Andalucía, Aranzazu García, believes that “it is extremely important to identify an area of the city where we can establish future projects”, although, she says that “they must be conceived as exclusive-use spaces, to replace the mixed-use buildings that traditionally have carried a lot of weight in the city, with a market share of close to 50% in the city centre”.

In this sense, the executive believes that “the new projects must be positioned architecturally to house the corporate headquarters of international companies, to respond to their needs in terms of technical features, efficiency and sustainability standards, and locations that allow easy connections with the rest of the city, the airport, the AVE station and the main public transport services”.

Málaga’s Silicon Valley  

In addition to requesting new projects, García reflects on the use that may be given to the Andalucía Technological Park, located in Málaga. The director of Savills Aguirre Newman in the autonomous region calls on the competent authorities to collaborate in this area to position it as “the ideal enclave for the office market in the city or as the Silicon Valley of Málaga”.

In this regard, the executive hopes that they will resolve some of “the problems generated by the inadequate public transport network, with no forecast for a future metro line, service area and parking for users”.

Original story: Eje Prime (by J. Izquierdo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

College of Registrars Creates New CPI Indicator for RE Sector: the IRAI

4 December 2017 – El Confidencial

The recovery of the real estate sector is now a reality that nobody doubts. In fact, activity in the sector in Spain has been growing in a sustained way since 2014, far from the minimum levels of 2013, but also a long way from the peak heights. The volume of – new build and second-hand – transactions is rising; more mortgages are being granted; property prices are recovering; and new build permits are increasing. Moreover, the number of companies linked to the sector filing for creditor bankruptcy is also decreasing. Each one of these parameters has its own indicators proceeding from different sources (e.g. Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE), real estate websites, appraisal companies, Ministry of Development…), that show the evolution of those specific parameters.

Nevertheless, from now on, there is going to be a new indicator that groups them all together and, through a complex weighting system, shows the overall evolution of activity in the real estate sector. This new indicator is the Real Estate Activity Registry Index (IRAI), compiled by the College of Registrars. According to its creators, it is set to be called the CPI of the real estate market, given that its preparation adopts a very similar methodology to that used by INE to measure inflation.

The indicator takes the year 2003 as the base year (100); it serves as the reference for analysing the evolution of real estate activity. In this way, for example, during the third quarter of this year, the IRAI amounted to 98.26% points, 30% below the maximum levels of 2007, the year the real estate bubble burst. During the first 3 months of that year, the index reached its maximum, 139.90 points. Nevertheless, since the historical minimum of 68, to which it fell in 2013, the sector has risen by 45% to date. Like in the case of CPI, the IRAI can be softened or purified to avoid seasonality, in which case, it amounts to 94.34 points.

This new index is a synthesis of different indicators. It includes real estate transactions, mortgage financing and, in addition to the above, another set of commercial activity indicators, such as the number of company constitutions, economic variables from filed annual accounts and bankrupt companies, in all cases relating to the construction and real estate sectors. For its launch, the College of Registrars has constituted a Committee of Experts, advisors from the college in each aspect listed above, who have been responsible for preparing the index and determining the weighting of each one of the indicators in the index. The IRAI will be prepared on a quarterly basis (…).

Evolution of the IRAI so far this year

The variation in the IRAI since January has been an increase of 10.12%, representing the cumulative impact of the ownership element (9.55%) and the commercial element (0.57%). In other words, the part corresponding to house sales and financing has pushed up the index by the most, compared to the boost from commercial activity. In December last year, the IRAI amounted to 89 points, compared to 98.26 now.

In this way, the groups with the greatest positive cumulative impact so far this year have been sales (cumulative impact of 6.98%) due to the significant rise in the number of sales (cumulative impact of 6.11%), especially of new and second-hand homes with growth rates of 31.87% and 27.06% and cumulative impacts of 1.19% and 4.14%, respectively.

Sales prices also grew by 3.74% (impact of 0.87%) with the price of second-hand homes having a greater impact (impact of 0.9% with a growth rate of 5.91%). Meanwhile, mortgages (cumulative impact of 2.56%) due to the significant increase in the number of mortgages (cumulative impact of 2.05%), especially for new and second-hand homes with growth rates of 21.65% and 15.42% and cumulative impacts of 0.92% and 0.94%, respectively.

From the commercial perspective, the greatest boost to activity has come from the decrease in the number of creditor bankruptcies involving both construction companies, which have decreased by 83%, and real estate companies, which have fallen by 57% (…).

Original story: El Confidencial

Translation: Carmel Drake

Why Are So Few New Homes Being Built In Spain?

20 October 2017 – Invertia

The construction of new homes is recovering very slowly and proof of that are the 65,000 new homes that were started in 2016; but whilst that figure exceeds the levels seen during the first few years of the crisis, it is still a long way below the 700,000-800,000 homes that were started each year during the real estate boom, which saw builders start work on 1,000,000 units at its peak. The question now is why are so few residential developments being started in Spain?

Paloma Taltavull gives some clues as to why so few homes are being built in her article “The housing sector: now and in the future”, published in the Economic Information Notebooks by the Foundation for Savings Banks, Funcas. In it, she analyses the current housing situation, paying special attention to prices and explaining the reasons why rental prices are growing significantly, even though house ownership prices are not. Ultimately, she concludes that “an increase in the supply of rental homes, or owned homes, is the element that could eliminate the tension in the residential markets in Spain”.

Taltavull, Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Alicante, considers that at the moment, sufficient demand exists to start building 200,000  new homes. She thinks that “the absence of sufficient property developers is slowing down the processes to build new homes, despite the recovery in demand”, given that “the sector suffered badly during the crisis, with a high proportion of construction and property developer companies being destroyed”.

“One of the effects of the crisis that still hasn’t been resolved is the destruction of the production fabric, which comprised a high percentage of small- and medium-sized companies, which gave the market a great deal of flexibility”, explains Taltavull (…).

The Funcas collaborator points out that, currently, there is an insufficient network of house builders because they have disappeared, stressing that the small property developers that remain have not yet recovered their confidence, whilst the medium-sized and large companies do not have the capacity to construct very much.

The professor also highlights that “the price incentive is not giving a strong enough push to the construction sector”, given that although “there is surplus demand”, “credit is not flowing” because of the labour market and the decrease in wages, which is a logical reaction by the financial institutions. Paloma Taltavull points out that this problem is particularly acute amongst young people, who “have been mistreated in terms of salaries for a decade”, given that they are the largest cohort demanding homes, but they do not have the ability to pay and the banks will not grant them loans”.

The expert warns that a lack of new housing in the ownership market and an insufficient supply in the rental sector is driving the significant rise in rental prices that are currently being recorded. She considers that a “mix” between the construction of new homes and other measures to promote rental at a break-even point would be ideal. She adds that the Administrations have an important role to play, given that public housing policy is “absolutely key both for revitalising developments in areas that need them and for avoiding poverty”.

The professor thinks that the public initiative could push the private one, especially in the construction of the type of housing that people need, given that they would be adapted to their ability to pay (…).

Original story: Invertia

Translation: Carmel Drake

Ministry Of Development: Finished Homes Rose By 39% In YTD July

17 October 2017 – El Mundo

Between January and July 2017, builders finished constructing 33,085 homes in Spain, which represents an increase of 39% with respect to the same period in 2016, according to data from the Ministry of Development.

In this way, the number of finished homes in Spain recorded a positive start to 2017, after registering nine consecutive years of decreases in 2016. From the peak of 2007 (641,419 homes), the figure had decreased by 94% by the end of 2016.

Of the total number of homes completed during the 7 months to July, 97.7% (32,312) were built by private property developers and 2.3% (7739 by public administrations. With respect to a year earlier, the construction of homes by property developers rose by 37.4%, and in the case of administrations, the figure more than doubled, from 318 to 773.

In the private sector, 20,043 of the homes were built by commercial companies, up by 46.3% YoY; 10,706 were constructed by individual people and communities of owners (+22.8% YoY) and 1,287 were built by cooperatives (81.8% YoY). Finally, 276 end-of-work permits corresponded to other types of private developers.

Meanwhile, the settlement value for the execution of construction work rose by 45% during the 7 months to July, to €4,381.1 million.

Original story: El Mundo

Translation: Carmel Drake

Ferrovial, FCC, Acciona & ACS Are Building Houses Again

25 May 2017 – El Confidencial

A decade after they sold or wrote off their real estate arms, the country’s largest construction companies are now returning to the residential property development sector. Ferrovial, ACS, Acciona and FCC have regained their appetite for property and although they have different paces and strategies in mind, they have all definitively decided to revive their real estate divisions.

In the case of the group chaired by Rafael del Pino, which sold Ferrovial Inmobiliaria to Habitat for €2,200 million at the end of 2006, it will lay the first stone of this new strategic phase in Valdebebas. It owns plot 128A there, in what is one of the most important urban planning developments in the north of Madrid, and it plans to build between 200 and 300 homes on the site.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, given that as the group’s CEO, Íñigo Meirás, acknowledged to this newspaper, the firm “is willing to become a property developer once again”. (…).

This strategy, combined with the gradual recovery in the real estate sector, has allowed residential construction work to account for 5% of the group’s total building portfolio, having closed last year at €442 million, up by 31.7% YoY. The group aspires to increase those numbers, by resuming its property development activity, which has caused it to analyse land operations in different areas to the north of Madrid.

FCC Real Estate also wants to make a similar move. The division, led for the last year and a half by Xavier Fainé Garriga, has decided to start developing half a million m2 of land that it owns in the Madrilenian town of Tres Cantos. The company has owned the plots for years, and its construction division will also participate in their development, along with the real estate subsidiary Realia, which will collaborate on the marketing side. (…).

Meanwhile, Acciona has a more ambitious plan, after it tried, two years ago, to divest its real estate arm, by listing it on the stock market or selling a stake in it to a fund – it has now ended up deciding to return to development. That was recognised by the firm’s Corporate Development Director, Juan Muro Lara, in March, when he announced the launch of 16 housing developments: 13 in Spain and the rest in Mexico and Poland.

In parallel, the group is finalising the transfer of its rental properties to Merlin, in a deal disclosed by El Confidencial in October, which will see the former’s exit from the real estate business. It also wants to push ahead with the sale of its hotels and office buildings through individual operations.

In the case of ACS, the firm is carrying out its strategy in the development segment through Cogesa, the historical subsidiary of the group, which stands out because it is the owner of the group’s two main corporate headquarters, the office buildings located in Las Tablas and on Avenida Pío XII in Madrid, and for owning sizeable land portfolios in areas such as Montecarmelo, Arroyo Fresno, Las Tablas, Carabanchel and Ensanche de Vallecas.

The turning point for this subsidiary, which is led by the brother of Florentino Pérez, Enrique, came two years ago, when it carried out a capital increase amounting to €44 million and then acquired one of the last plots of residential land in Montecarmelo for €2,200/m2. That figure turned the operation into one of the most onerous since the burst of the bubble, but is now seen in a very different light. (…).

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sabadell Still Struggling To Digest CAM’s RE

30 January 2017 – El Mundo

Real estate is continuing to weigh down heavily on Banco Sabadell’s balance sheet, above all due to the complications involved in digesting the enormous portfolio of properties that it inherited from CAM, most of which are located in the Community of Valencia. The entity is selling more properties than ever, its revenues have soared, the number of assets being sold exceeds the number of properties being foreclosed and the prices at which it is selling its real estate are continuing to rise, however, the overall impact of the initiative is still generating losses, albeit for the time being. Specifically, Sabadell’s real estate asset business unit lost €908.4 million in 2016, according to the Group’s annual results, which were presented in Barcelona on Friday.

Those losses already reflect the effect of the Asset Protection Scheme (EPA), which the entity relies on to cover 80% of the losses generated by CAM’s real estate portfolio.

The Catalan bank still holds €9,035 million in real estate assets on its balance sheet, which represents just 2% less than at the end of 2015. Most of those properties (land, buildings, homes etc) belong to the stock of loans that it inherited from CAM and are located in that former entity’s areas of operation, in other words, the Community of Valencia and Murcia. Of those €9,035 million real estate assets, €7,166 million stem from foreclosed assets and embargos of construction companies and property developers, which were unable to repay their loans, and of those €3,851 million corresponds to land. In other words, 42% of the entity’s stock is land, the least liquid asset.

Sabadell owns finished homes worth €1,377 million. Moreover, its properties from unpaid mortgages amount to €1,918 million.

Overall, the bank has managed to offset the mass entry of properties onto its balance sheet with an intensification of sales. For example, it closed 2016 with the entry of properties (homes, land, premises, etc) worth €384 million, whilst the sale and divestment of these assets amounted to €457 million. In other words, it is now selling more than it is taking on.

Solvia is working hard too

In addition, Solvia, the bank’s real estate subsidiary, which has its operations centre in Alicante, sold assets worth €1,557 million last year, up by 40% compared to the previous year, with 14,553 operations, i.e. 27% more. The entity said that “the reduction in the sales discount and the overall increase in prices are signs of the recovery”. Last year, Solvia relied on sales of large asset portfolios to institutional investors to improve its ratios. Not in vain, 22% of its sales are made to that kind of buyer. (…).

Original story: El Mundo (by F.D.G.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Ministry Of Dev’t: New Home Permits Soared By 17% In 2016

4 January 2017 – Expansión

Moreover, loans to build new homes have grown by 37%, despite the tightening of controls by the banks.

A decade later, the cranes are back on the skyline of Spain’s major cities once again. The economic improvement and return of credit to the property sector boosted the construction of new homes by 17% in 2016, according to the construction permit statistics published by the Ministry of Development.

The growth was driven by a 37% increase in the financing granted to construction companies and property developers, which received €1,025 million between January and October, according to the General College of Notaries. The banks have now digested the majority of the toxic assets left over from the bubble and are opening the credit tap to the construction sector once again, albeit including more restrictions and controls to avoid repeating the errors of the past.

On the one hand, in most cases, financial institutions are demanding that 80% of developments are pre-sold before the construction of any new buildings can begin. Moreover, the banks are requiring project monitoring to audit the execution of the work and, in the same sense, a more detailed control of the clients that choose to buy properties.

With the money loaned by the banks, property developers and cooperatives have started to design buildings aimed at capturing the demand for new homes that exists in the market. “Clients believe that the worst of the crisis is over and that prices are not going to decrease any further. Moreover, financing conditions for buyers are unique given the low level of Euribor”, explains Daniel Cuevo, Chairman of the Association of Property Developers in Madrid (Asprima).

But the doors to the new real estate market have not been opened to everyone. Most of the new homes sold are “reposition” properties, in other words, they are properties that replace homes that have become too old or too small for their occupants. Young people are finding it the hardest to form their own homes, due to the high rate of youth unemployment, the level of wages and the instability in the market. (…).

In total, during the first ten months of 2016, 16,043 permits were requested to build new homes. The sector expects to reach the 20,000 permit threshold by the end of the year, a figure that exceeds the number of permits requested in 2015 by 17%, but which is still well below the 113,000 permits requested in 2006, a record year, at the height of the real estate bubble. (…).

On the other hand, the new homes that are being built post-crisis are not the same as those that were built during the boom years. Now, property developers are designing buildings with three-bedroom homes that cost the same as a two-bedroom home back in 2006. Urbanisations, which become so fashionable at the beginning of the century, are also back in demand. “People want homes with padel courts and a swimming pool, plus they now also want specific spaces to celebrate parties for children and adults”, explains the President of Asprima. In total, the Ministry of Development granted 1,175 permits to build urbanisations in Spain during the ten months to October 2016.

The increase in property construction has been accompanied by more transactions involving land. The number of land purchases by companies recorded an average growth rate of 23% during the nine months to September 2016, across the country as a whole. In certain regions, such as Madrid, the increase during the first three quarters of the year amounted to 135%. (…).

The improvement in new build construction work also extended to renovations. Thousands of households took advantage of the economic recovery to undertake home improvements and even to extend their properties. Thus, during the first 10 months of 2016, 21,801 requests were filed to renovate or restore homes, up by 2.1% compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile, demand for permits to extend homes soared by 39%, to 1,634. (…).

Original story: Expansión (by Victor Martínez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

What’s In Store For The Housing Market In 2017?

28 December 2016 – Cinco Días

“The real estate market can look forward to a new smooth and long expansionary cycle”. That is the consensus of the majority of analysts who have spent the past few days preparing their end of year report and forecasts for next year. Although the forecast figures are unlikely to coincide exactly, the fact is that the trend is unanimous. Provided there are no major macroeconomic changes, in other words, provided employment continues to grow and interest rates continue to remain a minimum levels, all of the experts consulted, be they property developers, construction companies, intermediaries such as the API, notaries, registrars, appraisal companies or bankers, agree that: 2017 will be better than 2016.

This does not mean that there are no clouds on the horizon. For the consultancy firm Knight Frank, the main risk is the political context at home and, to a lesser extent, overseas. “During the months when there was a caretaker Government, many projects were frozen; now the main uncertainty is whether the new Govenrment will manage to approve the budgets”, said Ernesto Tarazona, Managing Partner of Residential and Land at Knight Frank.

In this way, provided there aren’t any new political upheavals, 2017 will be the year in which more homes are sold and constructed and at higher prices. In terms of production, experts calculate that if this year around 70,000 new homes are going to be finished, then next year that figure should increase to around 100,000. Meanwhile, in terms of transaction volumes, next year could be the first year since 2008 when we see more than half a million homes being sold once again, according to Tinsa.

On the other hand, the forecasts vary the most when it comes to house prices, with predicted increases ranging from 2% to 5%. The VI Observatory of the sector, compiled by the Spanish Association of Value Analysis (AEV), together with the Head of the Applied Economics Department at the University of Alicante, Paloma Taltavull, and a group of 21 experts states that the evolution of house prices will be contained due to two essential factors: the stock that still needs to be sold or leased, of which they calculate that 25% is owned by the banks; and the weakness in terms of demand that still persists across the majority of the country. In the opinion of these experts, prices will end this year with nominal increases of around 3.8%, and will continue to rise by around 3% in 2017. Other sources, such as Bankinter, raise that percentage to 5%, due to the booms currently happening in the real estate markets in Madrid and Barcelona, where house prices are rising at double-digit rates given the scarcity of supply of new homes.

What all of the experts seem to have rejected is that the market may generate a new bubble over the medium term, given that: house sales are growing in a sustainable way, in line with new mortgages; and they are doing so in regions with the greatest economic activity and highest levels of job creation. Moreover, the recovery in terms of the promotion of new homes will act as a buffer to prevent one-off price spikes amounting to anything more. (…).

Original story: Cinco Días (by Raquel Díaz Guijarro)

Translation: Carmel Drake