Reyal Urbis Files For Spain’s Second Largest Bankruptcy

21 June 2017 – Cinco Días

The long-awaited death of Reyal Urbis is approaching. The real estate company has failed to convince a majority of its creditors to accept the proposed agreement presented by the entity chaired by Rafael Santamaría, which included significant discounts of between 80% and 90% of a total debt balance amounting to €4,600 million. It is the second largest liquidation ever in history, following that of the property developer Martinsa-Fadesa, which folded with a debt of around €7,000 million.

The proposed agreement presented by the company has not received sufficient backing given that in the case of the ordinary debt, it only obtained favourable votes from 32.7% of the creditors; another 37.79% voted against the proposal and the remaining 29% abstained, according to legal sources. In the case of the syndicated loan, the votes did not reach the 75% threshold either.

The bankruptcy administrator, namely, the audit firm BDO, is obliged to communicate the result of the vote that takes place in Commercial Court number 6 in Madrid, where the judge will issue the proposed liquidation ruling, with an equity black hole of €3,436 million.

The liquidation of Reyal Urbis was finalised after its major creditors, including Sareb and the opportunistic funds that had acquired some of the liabilities in recent weeks, rejected the proposed agreement, as disclosed by Cinco Días at the end of May.

The company has liabilities worth more than €3,200 million corresponding to a syndicated loan, in which Sareb holds a crucial stake, with more than €1,000 million proceeding from loans from the former savings banks. In addition, Reyal Urbis owed almost €900 million in ordinary debt and more than €400 million to the Tax Authorities. In fact, the real estate company is the largest debtor on the list of overdue debtors published by the Tax Authorities.

The property developer is dying just a decade after its merger which saw it become one of the large real estate companies in the country, together with Martinsa-Fadesa, Colonial and Astroc. Its President, Rafael Santamaría, a technical architect by training, has spent his whole life working for the family business. He was appointed CEO in 1985 and took over from his father as President in 1997. In 2006, he starred in one of the largest deals in the sector, after acquiring Urbis from Banesto for €3,300 million.

But that joy was short-lived. The burst of the real estate bubble dragged him down, just like it did Martinsa, Habitat and Nozar. The company filed for voluntary creditors’ bankruptcy in February 2013 after Sareb, BBVA and Santander refused to refinance its debt.

Santamaría’s last ditch attempt to save the company came with an aggressive liquidation proposal. That plan included discounts of 90% on the ordinary loans. In the case of the syndicated loan, the offer included the “dación en pago” of assets, which would have meant accepting discounts of around 80%. In turn, the Tax Authorities negotiated a unilateral payment plan for the €400 million owed.

That aggressive plan did not seduce the creditors, who have seen the possibility of recovering their capital go up in smoke, choosing instead the option of liquidating the company’s remaining assets, which are currently worth almost €1,200 million.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Anticipa Wants To Become Spain’s Largest Rental Home Manager

3 April 2017 – El Economista

Anticipa, the real estate subsidiary of the US fund Blackstone, wants to become one of the largest rental home managers in Spain. To achieve its objective, the company plans to consolidate its assets in different Socimis, which will be listed on the MAB, according to comments made to elEconomista by sources close to the fund.

Anticipa is the former real estate platform of Catalunya Caixa, which was acquired by Blackstone in 2014. That same year, the fund signed the purchase of its first major mortgage portfolio from the same entity. Known at the time as Project Hércules, the operation involved the transfer of 40,000 problem loans, for which Blackstone paid €3,615 million.

Since the acquisition was closed definitively, in April 2015, Anticipa has been in charge of managing these assets along with those from another six portfolios, which have a combined value of €7,000 million.

According to the same sources, Blackstone’s objective is to continue acquiring portfolios to reach 17,000 rental homes by the end of this year, which would make its subsidiary one of the largest residential managers in the country.

Anticipa already has 12,000 homes up for rent or in the process of being put up for rent in the short term and has placed a package of 5,000 units on the market through the Socimi Albirana, which debuted on the stock market last week. Those assets, located mainly Barcelona and Madrid, were inherited from Project Hércules.

In order to continue implementing its strategy, the fund is already working on the launch of a new Socimi, given that it considers that to be the most efficient way of structuring its portfolio. Socimis have a special tax regime in Spain and pay Corporation Tax at zero percent. In addition to Albirana, Blackstone registered two other Socimis last year, under the names Pegarena and Tourmalet.

Led by Eduardo Mendiluce Fradera, Anticipa has been in charge of managing the enormous portfolio of loans to individual borrowers, on a case by case basis, which it inherited from Catalunya Caixa.

To handle this task, the firm, which already had extensive experience in the real estate sector, expanded its workforce to incorporate more financial profiles, growing the team to include 330 professionals.

The 40,000 mortgages that Blackstone purchased in 2014 include loans with varying degrees of delinquency, from up to date to NPLs. Of the total, 3% have involved social housing cases, but none have ended in eviction.

Since Anticipa began managing this portfolio two years ago, it has managed to reach 10,000 agreements, of which the majority are “daciones en pago” and the remainder are debt restructurings.

Having freed up the asset, the firm’s objective is to allocate around 70-75% of its homes to rent, and to sell the rest – generally, it will sell those homes that are located in places where there is no demand for rental properties. (…).

Original story: El Economista (by Alba Brualla)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Martinsa Fadesa Puts 300 RE Assets Up For Auction

6 February 2017 – Expansión

The bankruptcy administrators of Martinsa Fadesa are getting ready to initiate successive notarial auctions of various real estate assets owned by the firm, as well as of several of the companies in the Group that have filed for liquidation.

These auctions will be carried out through the auction portal of the Official State Gazette (BOE), according to information provided by the current managers.

To this end, the administrators of the company will publish information sheets about the assets to be auctioned, with the aim of providing as much information as possible to users about the assets in question.

According to sources close to the process, the liquidation of Martinsa Fadesa may be completed in 2017 once the creditors have been returned “the present value” of the assets that they financed.

The jewels in Martinsa Fadesa’s crown included a group of buildings and plots of land in Paris, as well as assets located in Poland and Morocco.

The liquidation of the company, which was one of the largest real estate companies in the country during the boom years, involved the sale of assets at discounts of around 30% on their respective book values.

It also included the auctioning off of assets and the assignation of unsold assets to creditors so that they could choose whether to carry out “daciónes en pago” or sell the assets in return for cash.

The liquidation process, which was agreed in March 2015, was structured into three phases.

The first phase included the company’s most liquid assets, particularly those located in Madrid and Barcelona and along the coast.

During the second phase, the bankruptcy administrators put mortgaged assets on the market, whose revenues were used to repay those mortgages.

The third phase was orientated towards the repayment of debt lent by the ordinary creditors with assets not sold during the first phase. Once completed, the other assets were assigned to the creditors that so desired them through a notarial procedure.

The real estate company’s liquidation process began before the summer of 2015, after the ruling was issued by the judge in Mercantil Court number 1 in La Coruña.

And, even through on 11 March 2011, an agreement was approved for Martinsa to repay debt amounting to €7,200 million over a 10 year period, without any discounts, the company’s breaches and liquidity shortages forced it to file for liquidation.

Original story: Expansión 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Anticipa Has Accepted 2,400 ‘Daciones En Pago’ In 1 Year

18 April 2016 – El Periódico

Anticipa Real Estate, the real estate manager that the fund Blackstone acquired from CatalunyaCaixa, began by purchasing a portfolio of non-performing mortgage loans from the former savings banks for €3,600 million. The portfolio included 40,000 mortgages worth €6,400 million. In addition, it bought portfolios of property developer loans from Sareb and CaixaBank. Since April 2015, when that operation was closed, Anticipa has worked to recover those loans and the underlying collateral – the repossession of the asset -. During this period, it has signed agreements with 3,000 borrowers, of which 2,400 have resulted in ‘daciones en pago’ – “the handing over of homes in exchange for the cancelation of debt” – and 600 have resulted in the renegotiation of the loan, in such a way that the borrowers can make their mortgage repayments, according to Anticipa’s own summary of its first year of management.

The servicer – which is also responsible for managing the real estate assets of CatalunyaCaixa, now BBVA – bought the portfolio on 15 April 2015 and between then and 30 March 2016, it has closed around 400 operations per month. “We have signed 20 operations per day”, say sources at the entity. “And we have prioritised friendly relationships to enable both parties to reach an agreement”. The entity highlights that this process has been carried out whilst maintaining a good understanding with the platforms of people affected by mortgages (PAH), although they acknowledge that there are certain discrepancies with the PAH in Barcelona, which regards Blackstone as a “vulture” fund, even though it is a long-term real estate investor, which is firmly committed to the rental management business in Spain.

Anticipa highlights that it applies the code of good practice under Spanish legislation, whereby those families who have nowhere to go after a ‘dación en pago’ are offered social housing. In fact, 25% of the borrowers of the 40,000 mortgages pay their monthly instalments on time. Anticipa sends out an invoice each month and collects the corresponding funds. Of the remaining 75%, some (25%) of the borrowers pay intermittently and the rest (50%) do not pay at all. The company prioritises enabling those borrowers who pay intermittently to become regular payers, through the refinancing of their loans. “We apply a partial discount, we amend the term, the interest rate and the loan principal, to reduce the instalment and whereby facilitate the payment”, explains the entity.

Case by case analysis

If the borrower is still unable to pay, he is offered a ‘dación en pago’, and the remaining debt is cancelled in most cases. “Each case is analysed on an individual basis”. Anticipa helps the borrower to find a home if he has to leave or offers him a property to rent “at market price” or by means of “social housing”, as appropriate.

The entity does not rule out mortgage foreclosures when there is no other way of reaching an agreement with the borrower…But, “we have not carried out any evictions”, say sources at the entity…and the objective is to negotiate in order to avoid eviction in all cases”, they add.

Anticipa, led by Eduard Mendiluce…employs 360 people, of which almost 150 are dedicated exclusively to negotiating with borrowers. (…).

Original story: El Periódico (by Max Jiménez Botías and Olga Grau)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Quabit Repays 27% (€90M) Of Its Debt Balance

22 December 2015 – Efe

According to a statement issued by Quabit, its recent €45 million capital increase has allowed the company to repay its €35.6 million debt to Sareb early.

This payment to Sareb has also resulted in the release of assets with significant short-term development potential, where Quabit plans to build around 1,000 homes.

In parallel, under the framework of the refinancing agreement it signed with financial institutions in March 2014, the real estate company has made “daciones de pago” of land.

As a result of the two operations, Quabit has decreased its debt by €90 million in total, which represents a reduction of 27% with respect to its debt balance as at 30 September 2015.

In this way, the company is beginning to fulfil the objectives of its business plan for the period 2015-2020, which according to Quabit, focuses on the promotion and development of its own portfolio of assets, as well as new investments.

Original story: Efe

Translation: Carmel Drake

Residential Mortgage Foreclosures Increased By 5.6% In 2014

31 July 2015 – Expansión

Banks foreclosed 36,519 primary residence homes from individuals who were unable to make their debt repayments in 2014, an increase of 5.6% compared with the previous year. That is the main finding from the statistics published yesterday by the Bank of Spain about mortgage foreclosure processes involving residential properties.

Almost half of the homes handed over to financial institutions were “daciones en pago” (16,489), an increase of 10% compared with 2013. Meanwhile, there were 17,113 judicial mortgage foreclosures, up 2% compared with 2013. In 2,801 of those cases, the families still lived in the homes.

On a less negative front, only 25 primary residence homes were handed over as a result of court orders and with the intervention of security forces, compared with 93 cases in 2013.

Judicial processes involving mortgage foreclosures over other kinds of homes (second homes and rental properties) also increased, by 1.6%.

Meanwhile, data regarding housing permits was published yesterday, revealing that 19,134 licences were granted between January and May 2015, an increase of 28.2%.

Original story: Expansión (by Juanma Lamet)

Translation: Carmel Drake