Tag: gross return

Merlin Buys Several Logistics Warehouses for €78.6M

10 September 2018 – Expansión

According to a statement issued by Merlin, the recent acquisitions made by the Socimi – since July – will add an estimated rental income of €6 million p.a. to the asset portfolio, with a gross estimated yield of 7.6%.

In Cabanillas (Guadalajara), Merlin has acquired a logistics warehouse spanning 15,075 m2, which is leased in its entirety to Jaguar Land Rover under a 10-year contract, with a gross yield of 6.2%.

Moreover, also in Cabanillas, Merlin is going to start construction work on two logistics warehouses spanning 42,500 m2 with an estimated gross yield of 7.7%.

In Vitoria, on the Júndiz industrial estate, Merlin has acquired two logistics warehouses, which span 26,775 m2 and are leased to DHL under a supply contract with Mercedes-Benz, and which have a gross yield of 7.5%.

The company has also signed a turnkey project for a warehouse spanning 35,282 m2 on an industrial estate in Ribarroja, with connections to the A3 and A7 motorways, close to Valencia. The delivery of the warehouse is scheduled for the middle of 2019, with an estimated gross yield of 7.2%.

Other Merlin projects include the start of a “built-to-suit” site and a speculative project in the ZAL of Sevilla, with a gross surface area of almost 18,500 m2 and an estimated gross yield of 9.9%.

Original story: Expansión 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Excem Debuts on the MAB with a Market Value of €16.8M

9 July 2018 – Expansión

The Socimi dedicated to the rental of rooms for young people is going to make its stock market debut at a price of €1.40 per share. The Socimi is going to debut with a portfolio of 28 homes, which contain 181 rooms for rent, all located in the centre of Madrid.

The real estate firm Excem, which was constituted in 2015, has the aim of investing in urban properties located in central areas of Madrid, Barcelona and other main cities in Spain. It targets properties that are suitable for renovation and redecoration and subsequently leases out rooms to students and young professionals.

Currently, the Socimi is looking to extend its activity in the capital to other cities with “high demand and limited supply of these types of assets for rent”, including Barcelona, Sevilla, Valencia, Málaga, Bilbao and Santiago de Compostela, according to information provided in the explanatory prospectus that accompanies its debut on the MAB.

Around 40% of the company is controlled by Excem, a group owned by the Hatchwell family. In fact, the Socimi is chaired by David Hatchwell, who started his professional career in Goldman Sachs and HSBC before joining the group.

With the aim of undertaking its investment and growth strategy, Excem’s Socimi has conducted a number of capital increases since 2016 and has mortgaged all 28 of the homes that it holds in its portfolio.

At the moment, it has an indebtedness level equivalent to 38.5% of the value of its assets, well below the leverage limit of 70% that the company has imposed on itself.

“HOMIII.COM”.

The Socimi markets the rental of its homes through its own online platform (www.homiii.com) and by subleasing through other specialist companies. Since September last year, it has had an agreement with Uniplaces, a company from the United Kingdom specialising in reserving accommodation for students in a number of European cities. According to the prospectus, at the end of March, the firm had 175 lease contracts for its rooms (96.7% of its portfolio) with different tenants.

By virtue of the contracts, the tenants pay a monthly rent and make a contribution towards shared utilities (water, electricity, gas, internet and central heating) after handing over a deposit equivalent to one month’s worth of both concepts by way of guarantee.

Excem has the aim of achieving a gross return on each asset of between 4% and 6%, a percentage calculated as gross income from rental over the investment made. The Socimi has been created with the option of setting itself an expiry date, given that it does not rule out selling its properties once the minimum period of three years established for Socimis has come to an end, or dissolving the company after the seventh year, “depending on what the shareholders agree on the basis of the performance of the company, as well as the current and future properties in the portfolio”.

Original story: Expansión 

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

CBRE: House Prices Will Rise by 6% in 2018

25 May 2018 – Expansión

Good omens for the Spanish residential market. After experiencing a serious setback five years ago, with a significant decline in demand and, as a consequence, a decrease in prices, the housing market is now well on the road to recovery, with a positive outlook for the year ahead. In this sense, for 2018, the predictions are optimistic, with an estimated increase of 6% in average house prices at the national level, according to data compiled by the real estate consultancy firm CBRE.

“We expect strong growth over the next six to twelve months, which will reach 6% compared to the current YoY rise of 5% and, then growth at a lower intensity from then on of between 3% and 5% for 2019”, says Álvaro Martín, Head of Research at CBRE.

This growth rate of 6% will be more acute in the large cities such as Madrid and Valencia, as well as in tourist towns such as Málaga and the Balearic Islands, where the YoY increases will reach up to 10%, according to the consultancy firm.

“In large cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, we have seen price tension but prices are still 50% lower than the average prices over the last ten years”, explains Samuel Población, National Director of Residential and Land at CBRE España. According to estimates from the consultancy firm, house prices in Madrid will increase by between 8% and 10% this year with respect to 2017.

Despite these price increases, the absolute values are still well below those seen during the real estate boom. In this way, although house prices have been rising at the national level since 2014, the intensity of that growth has been moderate, with YoY increases of around 5%. “In recent years, price rises of between 5% and 6% have been recorded, but during the boom, those figures reached 12%”, recalls Población.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions to that moderate rise: such as the case of towns like Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, where new build house prices have risen by 23%, 34% and 13%, respectively with respect to the historical minimums recorded at the beginning of 2014. Meanwhile, in the second-hand segment, the increases registered amount to 28% in Barcelona, 27% in Palma and 21% in Madrid (…).

Transactions

The price rises are being accompanied by an increase in demand, which, currently, is focused on those buyers who are looking for homes to reposition themselves or as investments.

“House sales have grown at a constant rate since 2015, but they have been very oriented towards the second-hand market, which accounted for 90% of transactions in 2017, due to the lack of supply in the new build segment and the absorption of much of the unsold stock”, says Población (…).

The consultancy firm predicts that demand for housing will continue to grow, with more than 575,000 transactions being closed in 2018, up by 8% compared to the previous year.

Of those operations, foreign buyers will retain an important role, above all, in the market for second homes. “The bulk of that demand is concentrated around five provinces, with established tourist infrastructure: Alicante, Málaga, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands and Tenerife, which accounted for more than half of the average annual volume of transactions by overseas citizens between 2006 and 2017”.

Another buyer cohort will be investors who buy properties to let them out, taking advantage of the growth in the rental market, which currently accounts for around 22.5% of the total stock of Spanish households. “The expansion of the rental market is attracting lots of investors, something that wasn’t happening ten years ago, given that they can now achieve returns of between 4% and 6% on average”, says Martín. By city, in Madrid, the average gross return amounts to 4.7% p.a., compared with 5.4% in Barcelona and 5.8% in Sevilla.

“If we also consider gains from the appreciation in property values, we see yields of up to 9% in the large cities”.

Original story: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake