Galicia Awards 1.1 million m2 of Industrial Land Supported by Aid from La Xunta

6 June 2018 – Eje Prime

La Xunta is promoting the sale of industrial land and Galicia is whereby reaching pre-crisis occupancy levels in the logistics sector. In total, 1.1 million m2 of logistics land has been awarded in the autonomous region, which represents almost 40% of the total available land for sale in 2015.

Amongst the measures adopted by La Xunta in 2018 include the elimination of regional taxes for the purchase of industrial land from the administration, with a 100% deduction of the Property Transfer Tax and Documented Legal Act Tax, according to Inmodiario.

The intention of the territorial government is, in addition to promoting the entry of new players into Galicia, facilitate the reactivation of disused industrial plots. In those cases, La Xunta adds discounts to the land prices of between 30% and 50%.

The Councillor for Infrastructure and Housing at La Xunta, Ethel Vázquez, anticipates that 2018 “will continue along the same path”. Not in vain, her portfolio has received a significant increase in budgeted aid, of 16.5%, achieving an additional €60 million taking the total fund to €424 million.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Socimi AP67 Debuts on the MAB with Aim of Doubling its Portfolio

8 May 2018 – Eje Prime

AP67 rang the bell on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) for the first time this morning. The Socimi debuted on the stock market with a preliminary share price of €6.65, which corresponds to an overall company valuation of €34 million. The aim of the company is to double its portfolio over the next few years through the purchase of new assets.

The real estate investment company is the sixth Socimi to make its debut on the MAB so far this year, which further strengthens the presence of this type of player in the Spanish real estate sector. In the case of AP67, the company has debuted with a portfolio worth €46.5 million comprising assets of all kinds located in Leganés (Madrid).

Gesvalt has acted as the external advisor to the operation, whilst Armabex has worked as the registered advisor for the stock market debut of the company, which is owned by Álvaro Rubio Garzón and Francisco Escudero López.

The Socimi owns small- and medium-sized plots of urban land for residential use, as well as commercial premises, parking lots and industrial land. In addition to the new purchases that it plans to make, the company aspires to “continue to generate returns of more than 8%”, according to its president, Álvaro Rubio.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Quabit Strengthens its Commitment to Cataluña

3 May 2018 – Eje Prime

The Madrid-based firm Quabit is setting its sights on Cataluña. The listed property developer, chaired by Félix Abánades, is going to invest €100 million in the region, where it plans to construct up to 1,000 homes throughout the Barcelona area.

This move, which comes days after the firm approved a €63 million capital increase, forms part of the real estate company’s business plan for 2022. Of the €100 million that it is going to invest in Cataluña, 70% will be spent on the development of around 1,000 homes in the capital. The remaining €30 million will be used to purchase new land in the autonomous region and to build developments in municipalities where it already owns plots.

The company, which owns more than 100,000 m2 of buildable land in Cataluña, has plots on which to build homes in cities as diverse as Granollers, on the outskirts of Barcelona, and Cambrils, the tourist town on the Costa Daurada (Tarragona), according to Expansión.

Abánades has confirmed that, for the time being, the property developer is going to focus on the residential sector. As such, plots in other segments, such as the industrial land that it owns in Reus, will be put up for sale.

Currently, the Catalan market accounts for 12% of Quabit’s total business, a figure that the President and majority shareholder of the company expects to maintain or even increase to 15%.

The property developer’s plans in Spain for 2018 involve the hand over of up to 210 homes, before increasing that figure to up to 900 properties next year. After that, the rate of home handovers will increase to 3,000 units per year from 2020 onwards, according to forecasts shared by Abánades.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Socimi Lists its €46-Million Portfolio of Homes and Land in Madrid

27 April 2018

The countdown has started for Spain’s stock exchange to become home to a new real estate investment company listing. AP67 has received the approval to start trading on the Mercado Alternativo Bursátil (MAB).

Although the exact date of the listing is still unknown, the socimi will debut at a price of 6.65 euros per share and a market value of about 34 million euros.

The vehicle is specialised in the residential sector and has residential buildings, one residential plot of land, two industrial plots of land and several commercial premises. All the assets are located in the municipality of Leganés (Madrid) and have a market value of €46.5 million, according to calculations by the appraiser Gesvalt.

The two most valuable assets in its portfolio are a residential building and a housing development that is currently under construction: between them, they total 25.8 million euros, more than half of the total.

There are several major shareholders behind the vehicle: the minority interests that the MAB requires for a listing, as well as the architects Álvaro Rubio Garzón and Francisco Escudero López, who control more than 90% of the capital. According to the document published by the MAB, both created a property management company in 2001, based on real estate development for rental in the area of Leganés, “specifically in the main streets of the urban centre, in locations near the Universidad Carlos III and industrial property in the suburbs.”

AP67 will be added to the fifty-one socimis that are already present in the MAB and to the sector’s main players, which are on the Ibex 35 and the continuous market: Merlin Properties, Colonial, Axiare, Hispania and Lar. In its debut, the company will be advised by the registered adviser Armabex. The Renta 4 bank will act as a liquidity provider.

Original Story: Idealista

Photo: Gtres

Translation: Richard Turner

 

The Lladró Family to Create a new 145,000 m2 Industrial Estate in Valencia

12 April 2018 – Eje Prime

The logistics sector is going to be the star of the real estate market in 2018, according to international investors themselves, and the Lladrós don’t want to miss out. The Valencian family, which is linked to the porcelain sector, is going to create a new industrial estate in the Mediterranean capital, taking advantage of land that it owns on the site of its large factory. In total, the heirs of the entrepreneur Juan Lladró are going to put on the market 145,000 m2 of logistics space in the city, where the logistics market has grown considerably in recent times.

The block of land that the family is going to market is located between the towns of Valencia, Tavernes Blanques and Alboraia. One of the reasons for the development of this urban operation is that the current owner of the company, PHI Industrial, only uses one-third of the site for its porcelain factory, according to Valencia Plaza.

Located in an area known as ‘Porcelain City’, most of the land that is going to be freed up for the new use is currently in disuse, with the exception of a central section that is leased to PHI under a six month renewable contract, which means that it will not represent an obstacle for the Lladró’s project.

Now, the family is waiting for a study that has been commissioned to define the profile of the new industrial estate. Given that it is a tertiary industrial plot, it could be used for many different purposes from business to industrial, to logistics to commercial.

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Junta de Andalucía Awards 6,627m2 of Industrial Land in Jaén

23 March 2018 – 20 Minutos

Specifically, the Junta de Andalucía has sold nine plots of industrial land located on several industrial estates in Alcalá la Real, Arjona, Martos and Torredonjimeno for a total amount of around €0.5 million, according to a statement issued by the Andalucían Government on Friday.

Most of the sales have been recorded in Alcalá la Real, where four plots spanning a surface area of 2,800 m2 on the Llanos del Mazuelo industrial estate have been awarded, which will whereby continue its development with the upcoming installation of new companies and the expansion of existing firms that already operate there.

In Torredonjimeno, three other plots have been awarded, spanning a total surface area of 2,184 m2, whilst in Arjona, one plot measuring 700 m2 has been sold and in Martos, another plot has been sold for the expansion of the Cañada de la Fuente Industrial Estate, spanning 941 m2.

The Minister for Development and Housing, Felipe López, explained that the land sales by the autonomous community were reactivated at the beginning of this legislature, “a decision that aims to place public assets at the disposal of business initiatives for the generation of economic activity and employment”.

According to López, the proceeds that the government has been receiving since the beginning of 2015 for these sales “are allowing the autonomous Administration to look for and generate new plots for future industrial and business uses with the aim of boosting economic development and responding to the growth needs of the production fabric” in the province of Jaén.

Moreover, he highlighted that Jaén leads the ranking for the sale of industrial land in Andalucía to date during this legislature. In total, including the plots that have just been awarded, 96,655 m2 of land has been awarded in the province since 2015 for almost €8 million.

Meanwhile, he added that the first offer for land owned by AVRA this year has resulted in the award of 28,376 m2 in residential and industrial plots right across Andalucía, for a total amount of €5.6 million.

In addition to the plots of industrial land sold in Jaén, the award of land for social housing in Córdoba is also noteworthy, where a plot measuring 4,656 m2, with capacity for 88 homes, has been divested for €1.7 million.

Moreover, a free residential plot, spanning 15,450 m2 and with capacity for 86 homes in the Malagan municipality of Rincón de la Victoria, was sold for a price of €3.1 million. In addition, another free residential plot for 10 homes was also sold in the Cordoban municipality of Obejo, for €103,500.

The sale that has just been completed was opened on 26 January and remained open for the presentation of offers until 1 March. The offer, the first in 2018 involving the sale of industrial, tertiary and non-residential land, as well as residential plots and other real estate assets, contained almost 900,000 m2 spread over 772 plots across all of Andalucía’s provinces.

The residential plots that were included in this sale have capacity for 3,060 homes, of which 1,437 are social housing in nature and the remainder are for free/private development.

Original story: 20 Minutos

Translation: Carmel Drake

Meco’s Town Hall Approves Occupancy of 1.9 million m2 of Industrial Land

27 February 2018 – Eje Prime

Madrid has a new batch of industrial land. The Town Hall of Meco has approved the occupancy of the largest surface area of industrial land in the whole of the Community of Madrid, placing at the disposal of companies a space spanning 1.9 million m2 in total.

The design of the new industrial estate, which is equivalent in size to 266 Santiago Bernabéu football pitches, has been approved, and now is the time to develop the land and promote it. The development of the land has been “claimed by and agreed with the public company Obras de Madrid”, which is the sole owner of one of the sectors of new industrial space and, therefore, “may start its development and promotion from tomorrow”.

Large companies such as Carrefour, Inditex and ICP Logistic are just some of the firms that have expressed their interest in setting up activity on the land that has just been approved, according to the Town Hall.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

AVRA Sold 21,000 m2 of Land for Social Housing in Córdoba in 2017

31 January 2018 – 20 Minutos

That is according to a statement by the Ministry of Development and Housing, which noted that four operations were closed in total for around €6 million. Most of the land sold by the Ministry in the province of Córdoba was assigned for residential use, for the development of homes for social housing purposes, up to a total of 21,258 m2 with capacity for the construction of almost 400 VPO homes in the capital’s expansion area of Huerta Santa Isabel.

The plots were awarded to the municipal housing company, Vimcorsa, which will undertake the upcoming construction of almost 300 subsidised homes, which will be added to another 78 units that the regional Administration is also planning to build in this enclave.

Moreover, plots with a total surface area of 688 m2 were awarded in the municipality of Obejo, for the construction of six private market homes, for €68,923.

Most of the plots sold were owned by the Agency for Housing and Rehabilitation in Andalucía (AVRA), which took the decision at the start of this legislature to focus again on selling land as one of its strategic lines. It had slowed down that activity in previous years, during the most critical period of the crisis, according to the regional delegate from the Ministry of Housing and Development, Josefina Vioque.

The delegate indicated that “the drive to manage the properties owned by AVRA has become a priority. The objective is to put these assets on the market to serve business initiatives that promote economic development and the generation of employment in the construction sector, one of the hardest hit during the crisis”.

Vioque expressed that “the decision to recover this activity, involving the sale of regional land, was taken in light of the fact that the market was starting to show signs of recovery in terms of real estate activity. The main objective is to generate revenues to allow us to resume other activities, such as the construction of social housing for families with housing needs and scarce or zero possibilities of affording a home in the private market, like the ones we are now promoting in Córdoba”.

The VPO activities that are going to be promoted, in addition to the developments in Córdoba, will be located in Cádiz and Málaga, where the Ministry is already working to draft the technical plans, whilst the process to obtain the necessary financing to undertake these activities is being finalised.

The land sale activity resumed by AVRA since the beginning of this legislature has resulted in the award of almost 300,000 m2 of land, of different types, at the regional level, for a total amount of €50.7 million, over the last three years.

The sum of the industrial land sold during this period, 183,055 m2, once again places that use as the one that generates the best results in terms of awarded surface area. Residential land awarded over the last three years spans almost 110,000 m2. Those plots have the capacity for the construction of 1,476 homes, of which 891 will be subsidised housing and the remaining 585 will be private homes.

Original story: 20 Minutos

Translation: Carmel Drake

Knight Frank: Inv’t in Logistics Will Amount to €1.2bn in 2017

4 December 2017 – Eje Prime

The Spanish logistics sector is on the right track as the industry approaches the centres of the country’s largest cities. The new methods of consumption, which demand greater speed when it comes to receiving a product and the increase in the volume of online purchases, has led to a rise in the leasing of logistics land in Spain, in particular in the regional capitals. During the nine months to September, investment in the market amounted to €550 million and that figure is forecast to reach €1.2 billion before the end of the year.

Spain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing at a rate of 3% p.a., and the index is not escaping the gaze of international investors, who are placing their trust in the country. This has been demonstrated by the largest logistics operation recorded so far this year involving P3 Logistics Parks, the developer controlled by the sovereign fund of Singapur GIC, which paid €243 million for GreenOak’s logistics portfolio in April, according to a report from the consultancy firm Knight Frank.

In addition to Madrid and Barcelona, several other large regional capitals have benefitted from the investments made in the purchase of industrial land on the outskirts of cities. Such is the case of Valencia, in the adjoining town of Ribarroja, where the largest operation was signed during the third quarter of the year. There, TH Real Estate acquired a Carrefour logistics platform measuring 55,000 m2, on a plot with a surface area spanning 87,000 m2.

Focusing on the Community of Madrid, the report points out that the absorption of logistics space has soared this year. The figures for the third quarter of the year, when 675,000 m2 of space was leased, exceed the surface area recorded during the whole of 2016 in the Spanish region. The international consultancy firm forecasts that Madrid will close the year with absorbed logistics surface area of around 800,000 m2.

The large deals notably drove the increase in the surface area leased in the country. Seven of the transactions signed in the sector during 2017 involved assets spanning more than 40,000 m2.

Prime yields, on the rise in Madrid and Barcelona 

In a survey of international investors conducted by Knight Frank, 51% of those questioned chose industrial and logistics assets as their preferred asset type for investment over the next five years. This investor appetite has led to an increase in the price of Spanish industrial land. Prices in the logistics market are on the rise, although yields are remaining stable.

In the market for logistics assets in Madrid, prime rents amount to around €5.25/m2. The forecasts indicate that the increase in demand and the improvement in the quality of new logistics facilities will lead to an average annual increase in rental prices in the region of around 3%.

Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the price of prime logistics land is even more expensive at around €6.85/m2. If we look at a map of Europe, the Catalan capital is the seventh most expensive city, and the most expensive, by far, in the south of the continent. In this sense, Barcelona, where land is already more expensive than it is in Frankfurt (€6.65/m2), is only exceeded by Amsterdam (€7.10/m2), Munich (€7.10/m2), Dublin (€8.15/m2), Helsinki (€10/m2), Geneva (€14.55) and London (€15.25/m2).

Original story: Eje Prime (by Jabier Izquierdo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Andalucía Auctions 16,000 m2 Of Land For Residential & Industrial Use

31 October 2017 – Inmodiario

The Junta de Andalucía’s Ministry of Development and Housing has awarded almost 16,000 m2 of regional land to residential and industrial development in the provinces of Jaén, Córdoba and Málaga, for a sales price of €2.2 million. This operation forms part of the third offer made in 2017, for the sale of land and other assets, by the Agency for Housing and Rehabilitation (AVRA).

In the tender for the sale of land allocated for social housing use, two plots have been awarded. One of them is located in the O3 sector of Córdoba, known as Huerta Santa Isabel, with a surface area of 2,197 m2 and space for 39 homes. The award price of that land amounted to €698,175. The other plot is located in the Malagan town of Algarrobo with a surface area of 4,092 m2 and space for 48 homes. The award price, in that case, amounted to €563,960.

All of the industrial land is located in the province of Jaén, with a total combined surface area of 9,428 m2 and a sales price of €615,723. The plots sold are located in the municipalities of Alcalá la Real, Martos and Linares.

With this initiative, the Ministry of Development and Housing is seeking to place its public land assets at the disposal of the production fabric of the region with the aim of boosting economic activity and generating employment, allowing for residential and industrial development (…).

Through this operation, the autonomous Administration will also take advantage of the revenues generated from the sales to continue allocating resources to its housing policy, in particular, to help the most vulnerable families and those less able of accessing a home (…).

Original story: Inmodiario

Translation: Carmel Drake