Tag: Eurostars Hotel

Sevilla: The Slow Re-awakening of the Real Estate Sector in the Andalucían Capital

2 August 2018 – Eje Prime

Sevilla, the third largest Spanish city by population, is seeing the first signs of recovery in its residential market (…).

The capital of Andalucía, which is home to almost 690,000 inhabitants, has seen its population decrease on a gradual basis since 2012 when it exceeded 702,000 inhabitants. The slow but progressive decline of the population is probably one of the reasons why house prices have not risen there and why new builds account for an all but residual percentage of the market.

Nevertheless, some of the data does indicate that Sevilla is jumping on the bandwagon in terms of the improvements in the real estate market that are being seen across Spain: a sharp increase in prices in 2017, an on-going rise in sales and, finally, investment in the city by groups of the calibre of Habitat and Ayco.

The city of NO8DO, Sevilla’s traditional motto, saw its population peak at 710,000 inhabitants in 2003, before falling below the 700,000 threshold in 2007. That figure rose above 700,000 again in 2009 before reaching a decade high of 704,000 in 2010, but it has fallen continuously since then to the current figures.

Real estate dynamism

Despite that, the dynamism in terms of house purchases has been considerable in recent years. In 2013, operations in the sector were still registering strong decreases, with a fall that year of 24.4% to just 4,715 house sales. However, the rises have been unwavering since then: up by 12.1% in 2014; 11.3% in 2015; 15.1% in 2016 and 14.1% in 2017, with a total of 7,732 sales.

According to data from the Ministry of Development, during the first quarter of this year, 2,234 house sales were recorded in the city, of which more than 95% corresponded to second-hand homes. With just 98 sales, new homes accounted for just 4.4% of the residential activity during the first quarter.

Nevertheless, and despite this growing activity in terms of sales, residential prices in Sevilla remain stagnant. In recent years, average appraisal prices per square metre in the fourth quarter of each year have decreased steadily, with the exception of 2014 only, when they rose by a measly 0.3% (…).

Currently, house prices amount to €1,468.70/m2 on average (€1,754,40/m2 for new builds and €1,464/m2 for homes aged five years or more). That value is 26.3% lower than the prices in Sevilla in 2012 and 35.9% lower than the peaks of 2007, before the outbreak of the crisis, when the average house price amounted to €2,316.10/m2.

Governed by the socialist Juan Espadas since June 2015, the weight of social housing in the city is greater than that of many other Spanish cities, at least based on data for the first quarter of 2018. In this sense, 177 of the purchases recorded in the city between January and March involved social housing properties, which accounted for 7.9% of the total.

New projects

Habitat is one of the companies that has invested in the Sevillan market this year. In July, the property developer announced a €30 million investment in a new development in the Andalucían capital comprising 199 homes. The acquired land is located in Mairena del Aljarafe, one of the fastest growing areas in the local residential market (…).

Another active player in the city is Ayco, which has acquired a batch of buildable plots this year in the municipality of Camas (Sevilla). In total, that company has purchased land spanning 18,000 m2, where it plans to build around 200 homes.

Another emerging business for the city is the office market, which closed 2017 with 919,173 m2 of space leased, up by 4% YoY, and approaching the records of 2013, according to a report by the Sevilla-based consultancy Inerzia (…).

In the commercial sphere, the Torre Sevilla project is the most important in the city at the moment. Six years after inheriting this macro-project, CaixaBank has let 100% of the office space and the shopping centre is on the verge of opening its doors.

Aenor, Deloitte, Everis, Orange and the Chamber of Commerce are some of the entities present in the 18-storey office block, which account for just half of the skyscraper. The rest of the tower is occupied by a hotel managed by Eurostars, belonging to the Hotusa Group.

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

Translation: Carmel Drake

Mastercard & Commerzbank Move Into Torre de Cristal

13 September 2016 – El Confidencial

The Cuatro Torres district is the new “City” in Madrid and is one of the areas where the leading real estate players have been operating with the most intensity over the last two years. The company chaired by Ignacio Garralda, Mutua Madrileña, fired the starting gun in February 2015, when it signed an agreement with KPMG to lease 18 floors in the Torre de Cristal, a third of the entire building, in an operation that allowed it to boost its occupancy rate from 42% to 70%.

Just four months later, Grupo Villar Mir put Torre Espacio up for sale, which the Philippine Group Emperador ended up buying for €558 million. By then, the skyscraper where PwC has its headquarters – the black tower that is also home to the Eurostars Hotel – had already changed hands, thanks to Merlin’s acquisition of Testa, and the sheikh Khadem al Qubaisi had already started putting the feelers out to sell Torre Cepsa, the skyscraper for which Amancio Ortega has offered to pay €490 million, according to El Confidencial.

Amidst this game of Monopoly being played out at the north of Paseo de la Castellana, two overseas financial entities, Mastercard and Commerzbank, have decided to transfer their offices to Torre de Cristal, the highest building in Spain, which measures 250m tall and contains 52 floors.

The credit card company has already moved into the skyscraper, whilst the German bank is currently undertaking refurbishment work ahead of its move before the end of the year.

But these two entities are not the only ones who have decided to move into the building owned by Mutua Madrileña. In recent months, following the arrival of KPMG with its 1,900 professionals, Torre de Cristial has seen a significant increase in the number of itstenants, after sealing several agreements with companies such as Red Hat, Cerner and Gesternova, which has allowed it to increase its occupancy rate to more than 82% and lease out a further 5,000 sqm.

Hardly any free floors left

The direct impact of the appetite for these skyscrapers from tenants and owners alike means that there are hardly any free floors left in the Cuatro Torres district (…).

Tower Sacyr (now owned by Merlin) is the only fully occupied tower, but it had to drastically reduce its rental prices to reach an agreement with PwC in 2011, during the worst years of the crisis, in order to acheive that.

Bankia also demanded that Cepsa occupy 100% of Torre Foster, but the oil company has now decided to put eight vacant floors up for rent. Those floors have a surface area of 13,000 sqm, a figure that is slightly higher than the 10,200 sqm that is also being marketed in Torre Espacio, the skyscraper where the main tenant is Grupo Villar Mir, which occupies half of the building.

These numbers show that the average occupancy figure for the Cuatro Torres district now exceeds 80%, a ratio that it has reached at a time when Azca, the traditional financial district in Madrid, is seeing a significant number of its properties undergo profound transformations.

The Cuatro Torres area will be further consolidated as a business centre with the upcoming construction of the so-called Fifth Tower, a skyscraper being developed by Grupo Villar Mir, in partnership with the fund Corestate, which Instituto de Empresa will occupy along with the health group Quirón, according to experts.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake