Tag: Fidere

Blackstone Negotiates Sale of the Ilunion Portfolio with Zurich for c. €100M

13 November 2018 – Cinco Días

The real estate giant Blackstone is pushing ahead with several divestments from its recently acquired Socimi Hispania. The US fund is negotiating with the insurance company Zurich regarding the sale of a portfolio of office buildings, which are occupied by Ilunion as a tenant, according to confirmation from sources in the real estate sector. The price of the operation will exceed €100 million.

Blackstone acquired Hispania through a takeover launched in the spring, which valued the Socimi at almost €2 billion. The US fund completed the operation because it was primarily interested in the company’s hotel assets, given that it owned 13,100 rooms across 46 hotels, the largest owner in the country in that segment. The US giant wants to create a hotel platform in Spain and, in fact, has already ceded the management of those establishments to its company HI Partners, the manager of other hotels purchased from Sabadell.

In total, Hispania’s portfolio has a gross asset value (GAV) of €2.811 billion. The most residual part, Hispania’s housing, is already being managed by another company owned by the fund, Fidere. And for the office component, the strategy is to divest the assets.

When Blackstone acquired Hispania, it broke off an agreement that the Socimi had with the British fund Tristan Capital Partners to divest the entire office portfolio for more than €500 million. That was the second time that the sale had been thwarted, previously Swiss Life was the buyer, in that case at the end of the summer in 2017, when the uncertainty surrounding the Catalan sovereignty process meant that the conditions of the insurance company were more demanding.

By contrast, the strategy now is to put this portfolio up for sale in a piecemeal fashion. The most advanced process relates to four properties in Madrid, which are all occupied by Ilunion, the holding company of the ONCE, as the tenant.

The largest property is the Torre 30 Building, appraised at €50 million at the end of 2017. Located next to the M-30 by the junction with the A-2, it was constructed in 1968, renovated in 2006 and has a surface area of 11,417 m2.

The sale also includes the Mizar Building, a property next to Torre 30, where in addition to Ilunion, Eysa and Paramount also have their headquarters, according to Hispania’s public documents, and which is worth €27.4 million. They are joined by the Pechuán building in Plaza Sagrado Corazón de Jesús next to Príncipe de Vergara, worth €19 million. Finally, the portfolio contains a property on Calle Comandante Azcárraga in the Pio XII area, worth €10.1 million.

Those four buildings had a combined appraisal value of €106.5 million as at 31 December 2017. Their current value is unknown but it is expected to be higher given that in May, Hispania revalued its assets upwards by 5.7% on average.

The rest of the office portfolio is not officially up for sale, but given that they are not strategic assets for Blackstone, the expectation is that it will receive offers for them, as a group or in different sub-portfolios.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Who are Spain’s Largest Residential Landlords?

11 October 2018 – El País

Every month, they receive rent from thousands of tenants who live in the thousands of flats that they own. They are the large landlords of Spain, although it is worth noting one important point: even though between them, they own more than 120,000 residential rental assets, that figure accounts for just 5% of all of the homes on the rental market. In Spain, the stock of rental housing – which exceeds 2.3 million properties, according to calculations from the Ministry of Development – is still dominated by individuals above all. At the other end of the spectrum, that of companies, it is not easy to draw a clear map of who’s who in the Spanish market. There are banks, investment funds, Socimis, real estate companies, servicers, managers…the difference is substantial: some are owners of houses whilst others specialise only in administering the properties.

The properties intersect between these two larges groups. The homes of a bank may belong to a real estate company owned by the entity itself and be administrated by its manager, which in turn, may be responsible for the houses of other companies. Or a fund may own several servicers, the name given to the platforms that, since the crisis, have absorbed a large proportion of the toxic assets (both properties and mortgages) owned by the banks, and that in turn, may be entrusted with the administration of some of the homes by the banks. The examples are simpler if we look at specific cases. What follows is a portrait of the main protagonists of the residential rental market in Spain. Seven companies that control portfolios that come close to or exceed 10,000 assets each, according to figures facilitated by them and by other sources in the sector.

Blackstone. This real estate investment fund is well on its way to becoming the largest owner of rental housing in Spain. It entered the market in 2013 with the purchase of a portfolio of social housing properties that the Town Hall of Madrid, led at the time by Ana Botella, put up for sale. Those 1,860 homes were just the start of a portfolio that now contains around 32,000 properties. Since then, Blackstone has acquired thousands of toxic assets from entities such as Banco Popular and Catalunya Caixa. From the real estate arm of the latter, CX Inmobiliaria, a subsidiary of the US fund emerged, which is now responsible for managing most of its rental homes. Anticipa is a specialist servicer in what is known as “fragmented management”. Its 15,000 homes do not form part of blocks of buildings, but rather they are scattered all over the country. In addition to that portfolio, Fidere manages 6,200 properties. That Socimi (…) was created specifically after the operation was closed with the Town Hall of Madrid and then continued to add other residential assets to its portfolio, which unlike Anticipa’s form part of blocks and urbanisations. The latest blow, in terms of the effect on the market, came last month, with Blackstone’s agreement to purchase 70.01% of Testa. With the control of that Socimi – which until then belonged to Santander, BBVA, Acciona and Merlin – around 32,000 rental assets are now under the orbit of the US fund, making it the largest landlord in Spain.

CaixaBank. Until recently, the Catalan entity was the largest owner of rental homes and it is still in the top three. Unlike the other banks, which succumbed to the pressure to sell to interested investors, the former Caixa owns 27,557 residential rental assets through its real estate arm Building Center. The entity’s own manager, Servihabitat, is responsible for managing those assets, and its portfolio also includes assets entrusted by other owners, taking its total to 42,163 assets. Of those 28,549 are homes (and the remainder are storerooms and parking spaces).

Banco Sabadell. A very similar example to CaixaBank. In this case, the entity’s own servicer, Solvia, is responsible for managing its residential rental assets. Its rental portfolio comprises around 32,000 residential assets and, of those, 74% belong to Sabadell, making it the third largest landlord in Spain with around 23,600 assets.

Haya. In fourth place on the list is the servicer owned by Cerberus. The investment fund created it after acquiring some of Bankia’s real estate portfolio. Then it increased it with purchases from other banks such as Santander. At the end of 2017, based on the most recent data provided by the company, it managed around 14,100 assets.

Azora. This manager administers around 11,000 homes on behalf of other companies and Socimis. Its main clients include Lazora, a company recently recapitalised by CBRE GIP and Madison, which owns 6,800 assets, and Encasa Cibeles, which has 2,500 assets and is owned by the investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Sareb. The (…) bad bank concentrated more than €50 billion in toxic assets during the crisis, including both mortgages and properties. Its objective was, and still is, to divest them, but in the meantime, it has been capitalising what it can. One of the ways is placing some of its properties up for rent. It has more than 10,000 in its portfolio, but it does not manage them directly: it has distributed the management of 5,223 units between Altamira, Haya, Servihabitat and Solvia. The 1,383 that form part of Témpore, a Socimi owned by Sareb, are administered by Azora. Finally, it has around 4,000 that it is reserving for social housing rentals and that it is handing over on a piecemeal basis as one-off agreements are reached with autonomous regions and large town Halls.

Altamira. Another servicer, which belongs to Apollo and Banco Santander. Its rental portfolio comprises 12,500 properties including tertiary assets. Most, around 9,700, are residential assets and belong to Santander or Sareb.

Original story: El País (by José Luis Aranda)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Just Four Socimis Own Almost 20,000 Rental Homes in Spain

22 July 2018 – El Diario

The debates over rental housing, rising prices and the risk of a new real estate bubble are all continuing to rage. Whilst Pedro Sánchez’s government has started to outline its new policy to avoid a hike in prices, investors are not letting up in their frenzy to take positions in the sector. Proof of that is the continuous trickle of new listed Socimis specialising in the residential rental sector.

One of the latest entities to hit the headlines in this regard is Testa Residencial, whose General Shareholders’ Meeting approved its debut on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) this week. That secondary market, specialising in Socimis and companies with smaller market capitalisations, will have 19 companies that either specialise in housing or own a significant portfolio of rental homes. Together they own a volume of assets that now comprise almost 24,000 homes, with a combined value of just over €4.1 billion.

Specifically, Testa is going to make its debut on the MAB as the largest rental home real estate company on the secondary market. Following its most recent operations, the Socimi now has 10,573 homes. The entity is owned by BBVA, Santander and Merlin, amongst other shareholders. It is followed, in terms of the number of assets owned, by Albirana, Fidere and Torbel, the three residential Socimis owned by the vulture fund Blackstone, which together own more than 9,300 homes.

Those four companies alone own almost 20,000 rental homes, according to data registered by the companies themselves in their issue brochures or annual accounts. That figure coincides with the plan outlined by the Minister for Development, José Luis Ábalos, which includes the creation by the Government of a stock of public housing for rent over the next four to six years.

Another of the most important Socimis in this field is Témpore, a subsidiary of the bad bank, Sareb, in which the company that owns the toxic assets of the rescued savings banks has placed some of its best homes and which made its stock market debut in March. It owns almost 1,400 homes and announced recently that it will be increasing its portfolio with new assets from Sareb.

Madrid is the province that is home to the most homes owned by the almost twenty Socimis that are listed on the MAB, accounting for 47% of the total (…). It is followed by the province of Barcelona, with 22%, and to a lesser extent, Valencia, with just over 4%. Together, those three provinces account for almost three-quarters of the assets owned by those entities.

Rising yields

The real estate consultancy firm JLL justifies this interest from the Socimis in rental housing by the significant returns that they generate. According to that firm, over the last year, rental homes generated a yield of 11.4%, compared with 10-year public bonds, for example, which generated a return of 1.6%. “Our forecasts indicate that yields will grow by 6.1% over the next three years”, they add, although they highlight that there are differences by region.

JLL specifies that the market is “highly fragmented” despite the “profound transformation” that is happening in the rental housing sector due to the development of Socimis and the arrival of institutional investors. The consultancy firm points out that these types of real estate investors are faced with the limitation of a shortage of entire buildings available for rent, a model that they prefer because it allows for a more efficient management. For that reason, they say that investors such as Testa and Azora are looking to grow their portfolios by building new rental homes in collaboration with property developers and construction companies.

Another noteworthy point about this growth in the number of Socimis dedicated to rental housing is the ownership of the companies. Almost half of the real estate companies that are listed on the MAB, eight to be precise, are controlled by companies that have their headquarters in Luxembourg. Such is the case of Albirana, Elaia, Elix Vintage, Fidere, Hadley, and Torbel, a company that is also indirectly controlled from the Cayman Islands. Another of the companies is located in The Netherlands (Barcino) and two others, Galil and VBare, are linked to Israeli investors (…).

Original story: El Diario (by Diego Larrouy)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s Banks Are Queueing Up to Finance Rental Housing

4 July 2018 – El Economista

One of the major challenges facing Spain in the residential market is the organisation of the rental home segment in light of the fragmentation that exists and the boom that is currently underway. There is currently a great deal of demand, but there is also a distinct lack of supply, and the new Housing Plan approved by the Government is not proving sufficient to incentivise the supply with the granting of aid to property developers that build rental housing. In light of this situation, we ask ourselves whether the opportunity that currently exists in Spain to organise the rental market is being taken advantage of?

“I think that the professionals and investors who have launched portfolios thanks to the creation of Socimis are taking good advantage of the opportunity, but I believe that some important players are simply not supporting the sector, such as the Public Administrations. Both nationally and locally, but above all locally, they are failing miserably and this is generating price tensions due to a lack of supply”, explains José Luis Ruiz Bartolomé, Director General of the consultancy firm Chamberí Asset Management.

Along the same lines, José María Cervera, Corporate CEO of Renta Corporación agrees and states that the public sector has been left on the sidelines. “Private capital has taken the initiative in this new segment of the market because it has seen a business opportunity and is looking for returns. And the public sector is going to have to enter, but now the arbitrage and those who are institutionalising it are in the private sector, and so they are going to place more rental properties on the market”.

For all of these reasons, during 2018, we are observing the creation of a new industry. Given that in Spain there are 18.5 million households, according to the latest figure from the Active Population Survey (EPA), and of those, 22% are rental homes, there are 4.7 million rental homes in total. Of that portfolio, only 5% are owned by institutional companies; the remaining 95% are owned by individuals.

“The Public Administration has done something important, which is to reorganise the real estate sector and separate property promotion and development activities, by creating Socimis that operate under a special framework. That has brought us closer to a situation that is more similar to those seen in other European countries. Now, we will have to see how the different players that are emerging in this market position themselves, and in two or three years, we will see the consolidation of this sector, which means that the Public Administrations will have to continue refining their regulations so that the sector can develop and be brought into line with those of other European countries”, says Nicolás Díaz-Saldaña, CEO at Témpore (Socimi of Sareb).

Nevertheless, not all of the experts in the sector concur. David Botín, Director of Real Estate Development at the ACR Group, says that this opportunity is not being leveraged. “It is possible that we are seeing the beginnings of a new rental market, but to date, just 22% of our households are renting and that supply is being provided almost exclusively by individuals. As such, it is very hard to fathom how we will reach the percentages seen in other countries such as Germany, where rental properties account for 48.3% of the market or the United Kingdom (36.6%). It is really hard to increase the stock in Spain because there are 19 million homes, and so a 1% increase means placing 190,000 more homes on the rental market, and that would take between three and four years (…). At that rate, nothing is going to happen quickly. No market works if there is no equilibrium between supply and demand. We need a large and varied supply for this market to work effectively”, he adds.

It is true that, historically, Spain has been a country of property owners, but the cultural and socio-economic changes that have been happening in recent years are drawing some new business lines, where the rental market is taking centre stage and is starting to become institutionalised. The new players in this market are: on the one hand, the Socimis, which are listed companies that serve as investment vehicles with tax benefits. The largest of them is Testa, which will debut on the stock market soon and which is owned by Santander, BBVA, Acciona and Merlin Properties. There are also others such as Azora, Vivenio (Renta Corporación), Témpore (Sareb) and Fidere, amongst the largest. Within this market, we can also include the servicers, which although they do not own properties, manage them, such as Solvia (Sabadell), Anticipa (Blackstone), Haya (Cerberus), Altamira (Apollo and Santander). And then, there are companies owned by the banks, such as Building Center (Caixabank) and other types of companies such as Alquiler Seguro, family offices, etc.

Therefore, now that the new players required to institutionalise this market are starting to be created, the next step is to develop a portfolio of assets. “We are going to need to reach agreements with property developers to build homes for rental (…), and at Sareb, we are going to use some of the land that we have for the co-development of rental homes (…)”, says Nicolás Saldaña.

That is a formula that is starting to spark interest. According to the experts, property developers have always been reluctant to enter the rental market, because they didn’t see it as their business, but in the end, the market trend has changed and whilst the sale and purchase segment will continue to exist, so too will the rental sector and property developers will have to participate (…).

The rental segment is a market that has always existed in the hands of individuals, but now, it is being professionalised, thanks to the arrival of overseas capital. “Investors have contributed many things, besides capital. They have contributed methodologies, rigour, professionalism (…). The banks were not open to this business before, they only financed promotion, but that has changed. For six months now, everyone has been wanting a piece of the pie and now there is a queue of financial institutions wanting to finance this type of business (…)”. Says José María Cervera (…).

Investing in residential properties is profitable. The gross return from investing in rental homes has increased to 7.3% from 6.3% a year ago, due to the strength of demand for rental properties, according to the real estate portfolio Idealista (…).

Original story: El Economista (by Luzmelia Torres)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone to List New Socimi with 4,000 Rental Homes Purchased from Sabadell

29 May 2018 – El Confidencial

One of the first funds to bet on the boom in rental housing in Spain, Blackstone, is on the verge of listing its fourth Socimi to specialise in this market, an area that is really blossoming.

The Socimi in question is Torbel Investments, a vehicle that primarily comprises the so-called Project Empire, a portfolio containing almost 4,000 homes, parking spaces, premises and storerooms that Banco Sabadell sold to the US fund two years ago.

At the time, the operation was worth around €600 million, although in net book value terms, Blackstone has recorded the assets at €113 million, according to Torbel’s most recent official accounts, corresponding to the year ending 2016.

Currently, the fund is on the home stretch of the procedures necessary with the CNMV – Spain’s National Securities and Markets Commission – to list the vehicle, whose natural destination is the MAB – Alternative Investment Market – given that Blackstone’s objective is, simply, to fulfil the demands of the Socimi regime to list the company so that it can benefit from the tax advantages.

That point means that this placement is completely different from the one being finalised by Testa, another giant in the rental housing sector in Spain, which is expected to make its debut on the main stock market in June, with €1.834 billion in assets.

Plethora of Socimis

Since it acquired these homes from Sabadell, Blackstone has managed all of the flats through its own servicer company, Anticipa, the firm that is behind the day to day operations of all of the large residential acquisitions carried out by the fund.

By geographical distribution, both in terms of property value and rental income, the main markets in which the Socimi has a presence are Madrid, Alicante, Murcia and Valencia, in other words, regions where the former entity CAM – Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo – had its greatest presence before it was acquired by Sabadell and whose foreclosed assets comprise this portfolio.

Blackstone is competing head to head with Testa to be the largest landlord in Spain, but it is adopting a very different strategy given that whilst the firm in which Santander, BBVA, Acciona and Merlin all hold stakes is opting to concentrate the greatest number of homes possible in a single company, the US fund is playing its hand by backing several smaller vehicles.

For the time being, Blackstone has already listed Fidere, which owns more than 5,700 homes, many of which have some kind of public protection;  it also has Albirana Properties, owner of another 5,000 rental assets; and Corona Patrimonial. But, in addition, the fund has been creating other Socimis such as Tourmalet and Pegarena.

All of these companies are expected to continue expanding their portfolios with assets from Project Quasar, the portfolio that Blackstone acquired from Santander, and which contains a sizeable portfolio of homes from the former Banco Popular.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Investors Increase their Commitment to Rental Housing

3 May 2018 – Expansión

The boom in the residential market, the changing habits in society, the difficulties involved in accessing housing and the increase in mobility have all led to a rebound in the residential rental market in Spain. According to the latest data from Eurostat, more than 22% of Spanish households live in rented properties, although that figure is still well behind the average for the European Union (34%).

In addition, the State Housing Plan, which seeks to encourage rental amongst the younger generation, and the greater professionalisation of the sector, is going to serve to further boost the rental market in Spain.

The change in trend, as well as the increase in residential rental yields, has compelled investors to analyse this business as an alternative to other real estate assets such as offices, shopping centres and hotels.

To lead this market, certain players have redoubled their commitment to rental housing, such as the case of Testa Residencial – the Socimi in which Santander, BBVA, Acciona and Merlin hold stakes – which owns almost 9,300 residential rental properties, with a gross value of €2.275 billion and annual rental income of €72.2 million.

Stock market debuts

That Socimi is preparing its leap onto the market, which will be carried out through an offer of its existing shares (OPV) and an issue of new shares (OPS) aimed exclusively at qualified investors.

One of the first players to back this business was Blackstone, which purchased 18 residential developments, containing 1,860 homes in total, in the Madrilenian neighbourhoods of Carabanchel, Centro, Villa de Vallecas and Villaverde from the Municipal Housing and Land Company of Madrid (EMVS) in July 2013. In 2015, the fund debuted its Socimi Fidere on the MAB (Alternative Investment Market) with 2,688 social housing properties, including those acquired from the EMVS two years earlier. Currently, Fidere owns around 6,400 homes for rent.

The fund also debuted Albirana on the MAB in March 2017 with a portfolio of 5,000 rental homes proceeding from Catalunya Banc loans. Another star of the real estate sector that has detected an opportunity in the rental sector to offload its assets is the Company for the Management of Assets proceeding from the Restructuring of the Banking System (Sareb) with Témpore Properties. That Socimi debuted on the MAB in April with a portfolio of 1,553 residential units, which have a gross value of €175 million.

Another player is Vivenio Residencial, the investment vehicle created by the Dutch pension fund APG together with Renta Corporación. Vivenio has invested around €200 million in the purchase of properties and now owns more than 1,000 rental homes. The Socimi plans to debut on the stock market in 2019.

According to data from Armabex, in 2017, five new Socimis debuted on the stock market with residential assets in their portfolio. In total, at the end of last year, 16 Socimis held rental homes in their portfolios, including, in addition to Fidere and Albirana, Vitruvio, VBare, Colón Vivienda and Domo.

In addition to the listed Socimis, other players in the sector include the real estate managers. One of the largest by volume of assets under management is Anticipa Real Estate, owned by Blackstone. Anticipa currently manages 12,000 homes proceeding from banks acquired by the fund during the crisis. Anticipa manages Albirana’s homes, amongst others.

Another star in the rental home manager sector in Spain is Azzam Vivienda – a subsidiary of Azora – which has more than 11,000 homes under management distributed across 140 buildings.

Azora, which will make its debut on the Madrid stock market on 11 May, plans to raise up to €500 million from its stock market debut to co-invest with its partners in various assets, including in the residential sector.

New players

The company founded by Concha Osácar and Fernando Gumuzio in 2003, was managing €1.5 billion in residential assets at the end of last year, which represented 33.4% of its total portfolio. It plans to increase its footprint in the sector to have between €1.3 billion and €1.6 billion under management by 2022 in homes, accommodation for the elderly and assets relating to healthcare.

Despite the increasing prominence of the rental sector, the business is still very fragmented and one of the challenges for the sector is to gain scale in order to compete. Juan Manuel Acosta, CEO of Greystar in Spain, said in an interview with Expansión in February that the US real estate investment firm is looking for opportunities to become one of the largest operators in the residential rental market in Spain.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone Lends Fidere €543M to Pay a €120M Dividend

23 April 2018 – Eje Prime

Blackstone is going to refinance all of the debt owed by Fidere, its rental home Socimi. The US fund has signed a €543 million loan with an international finance company for its Spanish subsidiary. Thanks to this operation, the company is going to be able to distribute a dividend amounting to €120 million, as reported by the group to the Alternative Investment Market (MAB).

In addition to undertaking the refinancing of this debt, Blackstone is planning to use this new loan to tackle Fidere’s investment plans and to manage the distribution of the group’s reserves. In this sense, the objective of the fund, as the majority shareholder, is to raise funds to pay a mega-dividend.

Currently, Fidere has a financial debt with the fund that owns it of €117 million, in addition to the €270 million that it holds in mortgage loans with several Spanish financial institutions such as BBVA, Sabadell, CaixaBank, Popular and Bankia.

The capital injection that Blackstone has made into its real estate subsidiary has a term of two years, with the option of being extending to five years in the event that certain conditions are fulfilled. The payment of interest has been set quarterly at a rate of Euribor plus 2.5%.

This operation follows others that have been completed in the real estate sector in recent times involving international investment funds and real estate companies. Blackstone itself purchased most of the now extinct Popular’s toxic assets, worth €30 billion, from Banco Santander. BBVA also sold a large portfolio to another fund, Cerberus, whilst, recently, Testa managed to sign a €800 million loan without any mortgage guarantee.

Fidere owns 10,000 residential assets for rent, after starting operations four years ago with 1,860 homes, acquired from the Municipal Housing Company of Madrid (EMVS). Most of the Socimi’s homes are located in Madrid, although the company also owns properties in other cities, most notably, Barcelona.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Stoneweg to Sell more than 300 Homes to a single Investor for €200M

13 April 2018 – Expansión

The Swiss fund Stoneweg is finalising the sale of a batch of three large residential developments located in Cataluña and Madrid, which have sparked interest from several international funds and a handful of property developers. The three developments, which contain more than 300 homes, are worth around €200 million.

They are the three largest developments of the almost thirty residential projects that Stoneweg is promoting in Spain through its subsidiary Stoneweg Living. Two of them are located in Cataluña and one in Madrid and, although in theory, they were designed to be sold, on an individual basis, to end users, the significant interest that the Spanish residential sector has sparked amongst investors has led to a change of plan.

In this way, Stoneweg has combined its three largest developments and is going to sell them as a single lot, with the idea that the buyer will incorporate them into its real estate portfolio and put them on the rental market. Although several overseas investors have expressed their interest in the package, the most advanced negotiations are the ones being held with a German institutional fund, according to sources speaking to Expansión.

Stoneweg was created in 2015 by the former team of the real estate division of the private bank Edmond de Rothschild and by the founding partners of CBRE in Switzerland. It is chaired by the former President of the Executive Committee of Edmond de Rothschild, Claude Messulam, and two Spaniards sit on the management board: Jaume Sabater, as the CEO and Joaquín Castellví, as the Director of Investments and Acquisitions. Since 2015, it has invested more than €500 million in the promotion of offices and residential buildings in Spain. Recently, it moved its headquarters from Barcelona to Madrid and expanded its offices in the Spanish capital to make space for its growing workforce.

The sale of this package of more than 300 homes is another example of the interest that the residential rental market is sparking in Spain. This business, which has just a few strong operators, is gaining strength in the capital. The professional rental home market in Spain is very fragmented. Testa owns a portfolio of 10,700 homes and is preparing its stock market debut. Another player is the manager Azora, which is also preparing its debut on the stock market, and Fidere – Blackstone’s Socimi – which made its stock market debut in 2015 with 2,688 social housing properties purchased during the crisis.

Original story: Expansión (by Marisa Anglés and Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone & Santander Will Transfer 21,000 Of Popular’s Homes To Various Socimis

30 October 2017 – Cinco Días

The sale of the real estate assets proceeding from Popular to Blackstone is not over yet, but the strategy behind the operation is already very clear and will reinforce the US fund’s position as the largest homeowner in Spain. The American firm’s plan involves replicating its previous purchase of banking portfolios linked to real estate on a grand scale. Specifically, the fund will transfer a large part of these homes to several Socimis with the aim of renting them out. A small proportion, the lowest quality properties, will be put up for sale.

In August, Santander sold 51% of Popular’s real estate to Blackstone, together with the real estate management platform Aliseda, which it had previously repurchased from Värde and Kennedy Wilson. These assets (comprising homes, land, office and doubtful debt) were worth around €10,000 million, and so Blackstone will pay almost €5,100 million when the operation is finally closed at the beginning of 2018.

Of that transaction, Blackstone and Santander will manage around 80,000 assets through Aliseda. Of those, 30,000 correspond to homes from property developer loans, according to market sources. Now, it has been revealed that the strategy of the two partners involves transferring approximately 70%, in other words, almost 21,000 homes, to several of the US fund’s Socimis with the aim of putting them up for rent, explain sources in the sector (…).

Blackstone has already followed this strategy in the past. Its first major operation in Spain was the purchase of 40,000 mortgages from the now extinct Catalunya Caixa for €4,123 million in 2015. Next, it created the platform Anticipa Real Estate to manage those assets. Prior to the purchase of Popular’s real estate, it had already acquired around €7,000 million in these types of assets, of which 12,000 were homes.

To create the residential giant, the US firm began to create Socimis to which to transfer its properties for rent. The first of these companies was Albirana Properties, which made its debut on the Alternative Investment Market in March, with a market capitalisation of €170 million and 5,000 rental homes under management.

But that was just the beginning. Since then, Blackstone has created several more Socimis, such as Tourmalet, Torbel, Albirana II and Pegarena, according to the tool Insight View from Iberinform. Now, Blackstone will identify the best homes, put them up for rent and package them into several different Socimis.

Currently, Blackstone is involved in a detailed assessment process of the properties in order to proceed with their appraisal, according to sources in the sector, which will conclude with the completion of the operation during the first quarter next year. The other homes, those that will not be transferred to the Socimis, comprise around 9,000 units. They are the worst quality properties and will likely be put up for sale on the retail market.

Blackstone first entered the rental market with the purchase of homes from Madrid’s Municipal Housing Company in 2013, which it subsequently grouped into the Socimi Fidere, whose shares are also traded on the MAB and which has a market capitalisation of €268 million.

Blackstone, which is led by Claudio Boada as the CEO in Spain, is particularly active in the real estate sector in the country. Last week, it purchased the company HI Partners, the owner of 14 holiday hotels, from Sabadell for €630 million.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Alfonso Simón Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone To Merge Popular & Sabadell’s Hotels To Create Tourism Giant

18 October 2017 – El Confidencial

Blackstone has surprised the market once again with the purchase of the hotel company HI Partners from Banco Sabadell for €630.7 million; the operation will turn the fund into one of the major players in the Spanish tourism sector overnight. Nevertheless, this acquisition is actually just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger objective, which is directly linked to the largest real estate operation seen in Europe in recent times: the €30,000 million in toxic assets that Blackstone acquired from Santander-Popular in the summer.

That huge portfolio, comprising foreclosed properties and non-performing loans, contained €800 million linked to hotel assets, some of which Blackstone wants to use to fatten up HI Partners’ portfolio, according to sources in the know. Those same sources define that move as a medium-term strategy, which will allow it to create a hotel giant, capable of competing with other large platforms such as Hispania, before debuting it on the stock market in a few years time.

Although the fund analysed its purchase of Sabadell hotels as a stand-alone operation, Blackstone’s roadmap forecasts the possible generation of synergies with its other large portfolio of hotel assets in Spain, in other words, those proceeding from Banco Popular.

As El Confidencial published, when Blackstone definitively closed the purchase of 51% of the Santander-Popular portfolio, the fund’s objective was to gradually divide it up, taking advantage of the range of vehicles that it already owns in Spain, such as the Socimis Fidere, Albirana and Corona Patrimonial, and undertake direct sales of both assets and debt portfolios.

HI Partners now forms part of that same strategy. The plan is to transfer only those hotels that comply with the group’s business model, which focuses on high category coastal hotels and very selective urban establishments. The Hilton Inn Sevilla, Gran Hotel La Toja in Pontevedra, Tamisa Golf in Mijas and Hotel Ayre in Oviedo are some of the assets that were held under the Popular umbrella.

Nevertheless, given that the bulk of this portfolio is debt whose collateral are these establishments, the transfer of the assets chosen to form part of HI Partners will have to be performed gradually, on an asset by asset basis, depending on the progress of the negotiations regarding the loan status in each case. Blackstone has time on its side since its objective with these acquisitions is to take advantage of the growth curve of the Spanish tourism sector and to do so through an asset repositioning strategy.

Management team

After selling HI Partners, along with its 14 best establishments, Sabadell will now continue with more than a dozen lower category hotels under its umbrella, which it plans to transfer gradually. All of the bank’s debt secured by hotel collateral also remained inside its perimeter for the time being; until now that was being managed by the team led by Alejandro Hernández-Puértolas and Santiago Fisas, and it will probably end up being sold off through Solvia.

The HI Partners management team will continue to be linked to the hotel group even after the completion of the sale to Blackstone, once the operation has received the green light from the Competition authorities. The team will face the challenge of continuing to make the company grow by repositioning the hotels, like they have been doing since 2015, in line with Blackstone’s plans for Popular’s establishments.

Original story: El Confidencial (by R. Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake