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3 October 2016 – Expansión
The Lara family, owner of Planeta, has sold the historical headquarters of Roca Junyent on Calle Aribau in Barcelona for more than €55 million. The buyer, a real estate fund linked to the Swiss bank UBS, will maintain the long-term lease contract with the law firm Miquel Roca, which occupies eight of the building’s twelve floors. The four remaining floors are leased to the medical centre QMS (Quality Medical Service).
The building has a surface area of 11,000 sqm, of which 8,600 sqm are used offices, 1,360 sqm are used as a commercial space on the ground floor, which is occupied by QMS, and a basement measuring 1,270 sqm.
The Lara family’s real estate company, Inversiones Hemisferio, bought the building from Colonial in 2007, just before the burst of the real estate bubble for €55 million and it has now sold it for a slightly higher figure.
This operation confirms that investment prices of buildings in Barcelona have now returned to their pre-crisis levels, driven by a shortage of assets for sale and the priority of large funds to invest in the real estate sector.
Despite the strong international demand to invest in cities such as Barcelona, the volume of investment in the city’s real estate sector is lower so far in 2016 than it was this time last year. In 2015, the Catalan capital broke records, with total investment of €2,000 million. Of that, 85% came from international buyers.
Despite the sluggish first half of 2016, which the sector attributed to the lack of assets for sale and the political uncertainty, the second half of the year has started with more movement in the investment market and all indications are that the final quarter of the year will be very busy in terms of the closure of operations whose negotiations are already being finalised.
Original story: Expansión (by M. Anglés and J. Orihuel)
Translation: Carmel Drake