Izilend to Spend €200M Financing Real Estate Projects in Spain

1 February 2019 – Expansión

Izilend has arrived in Spain with the launch of a vehicle, which has funding of up to €200 million to finance real estate projects in the country.

Since September, the alternative financing firm has already undertaken ten operations worth €20 million and it plans to finance operations amounting to €50 million during the course of this year.

Izilend, which has a presence in Portugal with a real estate crowdfunding platform, forms part of the holding company FS Capital Partners, which also includes a servicer, Fintech, Finsolutia and a financial advisory company (EAFI).

Izilend is thereby joining other alternative financing platforms specialising in the real estate sector that have made their debuts in Spain in recent months, such as Íbero Capital Management, from the US investment fund Oak Hill Advisors, and the firm promoted by Azora and Oquendo.

Focus

In the case of Izilend, the firm focuses on the financing of projects amounting to between €1 million and €10 million. To date, it has financed investors, property developers, cooperatives and Socimis for projects in Madrid, Málaga, Sevilla and the Balearic Islands. The financing fund intends to continue expanding the focus and to finance different types of assets ranging from housing, offices, retail and land in the main cities of Spain and Portugal.

Francisco Jonet, one of the people responsible for Izilend’s business in Spain, explains that the company offers a solution to property developers and real estate investors to develop projects that the traditional banks are not interested in either due to the type of product, the situation of the operation or the response times.

“To date, we have financed firms ranging from small property developers to Socimis, and products ranging from land to residential blocks, located in different provinces around the country”, said Jonet.

Gonzalo Gutiérrez de Mesa, the other person in charge of the fund, forecasts that the demand for alternative financing will double over the next five years and will thereby approach the market rates in more mature countries in Europe, where this type of financing accounts for between 30% and 40% of the total market. “We are creating a new niche in which we believe there is great potential”, adds Gutiérrez.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Overseas Funds Compete to Finance & Buy Land in Spain

15 April 2018 – Voz Pópuli

At the beginning of 2012, at the height of the economic crisis, one of the directors of the Bank of Spain – José María Roldán, now the President of the AEB – faced a tough meeting with investors. One of them told him that land in Spain was worth nothing. “If that’s the case, then I’ll take it all”, replied Roldán.

And if he had done so, today, the executive would be a millionaire and the same funds that raised doubts over the banks’ balance sheets would today be knocking at his door to buy that land and finance developments on it.

The good times in the Spanish economy and the real estate recovery are causing the opportunistic funds to look for ways to take advantage of the situation. They are buying assets, real estate companies – Habitat and Inmoglacier are the most recent examples – and trying to fill the gap left by the banks in the financing arena. That is where they have set their sights on land, the last bastion, where traditional entities are still wary of lending.

“Bank financing is available for projects and occasionally for parts of plots, but it is inflexible and restricted to certain locations and pre-sales levels. Ours (financing) is flexible in terms of volume, periods and conditions”, says Luis Moreno, Senior Partner at Ibero Capital Management, a firm that has just teamed up with Oak Hill Advisors to lend the property developer at least €400 million. In just a few weeks, they already have projects on the table exceeding that amount.

Types of investors

“Bank financing is still almost non-existent and is only granted in very low percentages in situations of high pre-sales”, says Pablo Méndez, National Director of Capital Markets at Savills Aguirre Newman.

The example of Oak Hill is just one of many. Julian Labarra, National Director of Corporate Finance at CBRE, explains the different types of investors that are interested in land. A first group comprises funds that provide bridge loans. Whilst the banks require “that a development already has the necessary permits and a certain level of pre-sales”, some of the funds financing certain projects with “yields of 14-15%”. And they exit after 18-24 month, by which point the development meets the requirements of the traditional banks (…). Active funds in this segment include Incus, Oquendo and Avenue.

Other funds have chosen to team up directly with Spanish property developers: they put up the capital to buy and develop land and the managers contribute their knowledge. There are several examples: Lone Star with Neinor, Castlelake with Aedas, Cerberus with Inmoglacier; Bain Capital with Habitat; and Morgan Stanley with Gestilar.

Another similar, more recent, example is the association between FS Capital – from Finsolutia – and Inmobiliaria Espacio, a company owned by the Villar Mir group, to relaunch the construction business and sell homes by investing €400 million on land purchases (…).

Other funds also interested in land are those committed to financing the whole process, such as Oak Hill, and those that are buying portfolios of land from the banks and from Sareb, but not to resell them, such as Deutsche Bank and Blackstone.

By location, the experts agree that financing has gone from being limited to the large capitals to appearing in increasingly more cities. “(…). Until two years ago, interest was limited to Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and the Balearic Islands. Now we are seeing operations along the whole coast, as well as in Sevilla, Zaragoza and Pamplona, amongst others (…)”, says Labarra, of CBRE. “This year we will see operations in cities such as Bilbao, Vigo, Salamanca, Zaragoza and Murcia, which have recently come onto the radar of the large investment groups”, adds Méndez, of Savills (…).

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga)

Translation: Carmel Drake