Tag: properties

Spain’s Social Security Puts 3 Assets in Barcelona up for Auction for €20.5M

15 October 2018 – Eje Prime

Spain’s Social Security department is doing its part to reactivate the Catalan real estate market. The public body has put three assets up for auction in Barcelona with a total asking price of €20.5 million. The auction will take place on 21 November at the provincial offices of the General Treasury of Social Security in the Catalan capital.

The most high-profile property is the former Social Court, located at number 41 Ronda de Sant Pere in Barcelona. With a surface area of 5,926 m2, the asset is going to be auctioned for €16.7 million, according to reports from Expansión.

The second building up for sale is a single-family home located on Passatge de Mercader in Barcelona, very close to Rambla Catalunya. In total, the useful surface area of that residential asset is 240 m2, and the asking price amounts to around €3.8 million.

The third property is a commercial premise, located on Avenida Carlos III in Barcelona, next to Planeta’s headquarters. That asset has a surface area of 500 m2, distributed over the ground floor and four semi-basement floors. That property will go up for auction for more than €1 million.

In addition, the Ministry of Labour has also put a ground floor commercial property up for sale. That asset has a surface area of 830 m2 and is located in the centre of the city of Girona. In that case, the auction is going to be held on 5 November at the Gerona headquarters of the Social Security offices. The asking price for that asset is €922,800

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sareb Sets Itself an Online Sales Challenge: €1.8bn in NPLs

10 July 2018 – El Economista

Sareb has launched a new wave of non-performing loans for sale on its online marketing channel, aimed at investors and professionals, to boost the divestment of €1.8 billion, equivalent to 7.2% of its portfolio of financial assets, according to sources at the company speaking to Europa Press.

Since July 2017, Sareb has had a dedicated loan sales channel for investors and professionals, a pioneering initiative in the European market, which allows it to promote divestment and increase the visibility of these kinds of assets.

The aim of the so-called bad bank is to enhance the transparency of the sales processes of these types of assets, which are now in their fourth wave. At the end of 2017, it had managed to sell loans with a nominal value of €186 million, €35 million through its website and €151 million through its servicers, which also have specific platforms to market these portfolios.

The guarantees associated with these loans mainly constitute mortgages over properties of different kinds: finished residential homes, work in progress buildings and land.

With this channel, Sareb is continuing to push ahead with its divestment process and its commitment to a more dynamic and transparent loan market, according to Expansion.

The channel is aimed at investors and professionals who fulfil a series of minimum eligibility requirements. Sareb’s aim is to expand the number and profile of investors who can participate in its loan sale processes, whereby facilitating divestment in the segment. In this way, the players that may operate on the channel include international and domestic professionals, as well as local operators interested in the loans.

Sareb has a loan volume amounting to more than €25 billion proceeding from almost 14,575 debtors. All of them have a combined debt of €70.4 billion, including associated interest and expenses. In order to recover those amounts, the entity carries out an active management process that allows it to ensure the payment of interest on the loans and, where possible, their repayment or cancellation.

When it was constituted, Sareb received around 200,000 assets worth €50.8 billion, of which 80% were loans and property developer credits and 20% were properties.

After five years of life, Sareb has reduced its portfolio by more than €13.6 billion. Currently, its portfolio of assets comprises 67.3% in loans and 32.6% in properties.

Sareb issued debt backed by the Spanish State to pay the rescued entities for the assets that they transferred to the company. The company is complying with the repayment of that debt, and to date has repaid more than €12.9 billion.

Original story: El Economista 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Santander & Blackstone Hold Onto the Real Estate Company GAC40

18 May 2018 – Voz Pópuli

Project Quasar Investment, the company created by Santander and Blackstone to bring together Banco Popular’s real estate assets worth €30 billion, has absorbed the company ‘Gestión de Activos Castellana 40’ (GAC40), whose debt amounting to €220 million Popular forgave on 30 December 2014, a move that caught the attention of the European Central Bank.

According to sources familiar with the operation, GAC40 filed for creditor pre-bankruptcy after it found itself in the cause of dissolution, but that measure was cancelled after the formal agreement was reached to transfer Popular’s assets to Project Quasar Investment in March. Sources consulted describe the operation as a “bargain”, given that Santander and Blackstone have effectively acquired GAC40’s assets at a discount of almost 69% and without the burdens that was weighing it down.

The Hispania Buildings in the centres of Murcia and Alicante are just two of the assets owned by GAC40. The company also owns the following shopping centres: La Fuensanta in Móstoles (Madrid); Juan de Borbón (Murcia); and Hispania, in Orihuela. Moreover, it has one supermarket in Totana (Murcia) and another one in Vinarós (Castellón), as well as a hotel in Cartagena. Although most of the properties are occupied, the mortgage charges that had been hanging over them since the real estate boom meant that their sale was unfeasible, according to the sources consulted.

The properties form part of Grupo Hispania, which the businessman Trinitario Casanova, the same person who agreed the sale of Edificio España in Madrid to the Riu group last year, sold in 2008 to José Ramón Carabante – the former shareholder of real estate companies from the boom and the founder of the only Spanish team to have operated in the Formula 1 arena, Hispania – for €650 million.

Carabante abandoned the management of Grupo Hispania in 2011 and was replaced by José Fernando Martínez Blanco, an expert in the liquidation and restructuring of companies. According to the sources consulted, Martínez Blanco was appointed by Banco Popular to acquire Carabante’s companies.

Martínez Blanco changed the registered name of the companies acquired from Carabante to ‘Gestión de Activos Castellana 40’ (GAC40) in 2012. The firm was weighed down by a debt amounting to €562.5 million, with Banco Popular as the main creditor. Until the absorption of GAC40 by Santander and Blackstone, Martínez Blanco had continued as the administrator of the company.

Forgive and refinance

GAC40 has remained active all these years thanks to financial support from Popular, which has been forgiving and refinancing the company’s debt year after year.

On 30 December 2014, Banco Popular’s Board of Directors decided to waive GAC40’s debt. That decision caught the attention of the European Central Bank, which conducted an inspection and identified “deficiencies” in the authorisation of the operation, as this newspaper reported.

The most recent refinancing of GAC40’s debt happened a month after the intervention of Banco Popular and its sale to Santander. On 6 July 2017, the company agreed “as the primary financial creditor”, to “convert the debt into a participation loan amounting to €19.4 million”.

With that debt conversion agreed just a month after Popular’s intervention, GAC40 was able to correct the critical situation that it found itself in. According to the company’s accounts for 2016, to which this newspaper has had access through Insight View, the company was in cause of dissolution with a negative goodwill balance of €221 million and financial debt of almost €250 million.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Alberto Ortín)

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA Continues to Obtain Juicy Profits from the RE Market

17 April 2018 – Merca2

Bilbao. Gran Vía, 1. One of the most iconic buildings in the Vizcayan capital has been located at that address since 1969. Comprising 21 storeys and measuring 86 m tall, it was the giant of the city until the arrival of Torre Iberdrola. Headquarters, at the time, of Banco de Vizcaya, the entity known nowadays as BBVA has just put the property up for sale. The price? Around €100 million.

This is a new milestone in the process to divest iconic buildings that the entity chaired by Francisco González has been carrying out for several years and which has been generating some juicy profits. This money for the coffers is a godsend for the balance sheet.

Another example, the most recent on the long list, saw the sale of Torre Puig in 2017 to the Catalan perfume group of the same name. That building, which ended up in BBVA’s hands after its acquisition of Catalunya Caixa, was sold for €60 million, at a gain of €30 million.

Also prior to this latest operation on Bilbao’s Gran Vía, which is expected to be closed before the summer, in 2015, BBVA sold the office block known as Torre Ederra in Madrid, located at number 77 Paseo de la Castellana, to Gmp (owned by the Montoro Alemán family and the sovereign fund of Singapore GIC). Spanning 21,000 m2 and spread over 18 floors, BBVA acquired that property in 2003 for €87.5 million from the French group Saint Gobain. The sales price paid by Gmp exceeded €90 million.

BBVA and its €300 million gain

There are several reasons behind BBVA’s decision to divest a series of buildings; some of them have significant value, not only financial but also in terms of their history and architectural beauty.

One of the reasons is to finance the cost of the creation of BBVA City (Ciudad BBVA). The new headquarters, popularly known as La Vela due to its most iconic tower, also comprises another seven horizontal buildings. It cost around €700 million to build and was constructed to reduce by one third the operating cost of having around 6,500 employees spread across a dozen properties, amongst other reasons.

Another building that was sold, for example, was the work of the architect Francisco Javier Saénz de Oiza. Constructed at number 81 Paseo de la Castellana, measuring 100 m tall, and spanning more than 49,000 m2 over 30 storeys, that property was sold in 2007, also to the real estate group Gmp.

That same year, BBVA reduced its portfolio further by placing other buildings in Madrid on the market, such as those located on Calle Goya 14, Calle Alcalá 16 and on Gran Vía de Hortaleza. In total, more than 108,000 m2 of space was sold, which saw these last four buildings generate gains of €300 million for the entity chaired by González (…).

Another operation that was different was BBVA’s sale, at the end of 2017, of its real estate division to the fund Cerberus Capital for around €4 billion. That deal was carried out at a discount of 61%: the gross book value of the 78,000 real estate assets that form part of the deal is €13 billion.

In this case, the operation involved divesting the bank’s exposure to property, in part “imposed” or “recommended” by the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) of the European Central Bank (…).

Which assets are being spared? So far, the former headquarters of Argentaria, located on Paseo de Recoletos in Madrid, which currently houses the headquarters of Fundación BBVA. For the time being, no “for sale” sign has been put up there. But it could only be a matter of time.

Original story: Merca2 (by Valentín Bustos)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sareb Still Faces Challenges Five Years After its Creation

27 February 2018 – Expansión

The bad bank was created with 200,000 toxic assets worth €50.8 billion, inherited from the rescued savings banks. In five years, it has divested 27% of that encumbrance. It has another ten years left to liquidate its remaining stock.

Just over five years ago, Sareb (…) was launched. The creation of the bad bank was made possible thanks to the participation of European funds in the bank rescue and the solidarity of the financial system, which had the capacity to resist the crisis and contribute its grain of sand to the process.

Sareb was created with private capital majority (contributed by the banks, with the exception of BBVA, which refused to participate, as well as insurance companies and a handful of real estate companies) and the remainder was provided by the State through the Frob, in such a way that any equity imbalances and losses that the new company would incur would not be accounted for in the public deficit (…).

The last five years have not exactly been a walk in the park for Sareb (…). Nevertheless, it has generated revenues from the sale of assets amounting to €12.9 billion, which have allowed it to cover its expenses, which, in addition to the cost of its 400 employees, involve: the payment of commissions to intermediary companies (€1.1 billion); the payment of interest (€4.0 billion (…)); taxes (€790 million (…)) and more than €400 million in maintenance costs and service charge payments.

The bad bank’s revenues proceed from the sale of its assets, whose composition has changed considerably since its creation. Currently, Sareb owns almost the same number of properties as it had at the beginning, but after having sold almost 65,000 assets. That is because some of the loans that were transferred to Sareb upon its creation have now been converted into properties through the execution of the guarantees that they secured. In this way, properties now account for 32% of the company’s total asset value, whilst the weight of loans has decreased from 80% to its current level of 68%. The entity’s assets have decreased by 27% to reach €36.9 billion and the debt issued by Sareb, which is guaranteed by the State, currently stands at €37.9 billion, down by 25%.

The company has generated positive margins during the course of its life, although it has only ever recorded losses. In 2016, the most recent period for which figures are available, its losses amounted to €663 million and, although its results for 2017 have not been published yet, the losses are expected to be similar. Reality has imposed itself on the initial business plans. Today, both the entity’s President, Jaime Echegoyen, and the company’s shareholders, understand that one possible objective would be for the entity to be liquidated within 10 years without having needed any new capital contributions and for some of the investment to be recovered, around 60%, with the remaining 40% having to be written off.

The President of Sareb understands that the company is fulfilling the basic purpose for which it was created, albeit with difficulties: the sale of damaged assets from the entities that received public aid, because, it does not have any other levers that would allow it to offset the possible losses that it would incur if it accelerated its sales.

Sareb only generates revenues from the sale of its assets and that is forcing it to adjust its sales prices a lot more so as not to incur losses. In this regard, it is totally different from the other financial institutions, for whom the damaged real estate assets account for only part of their balance sheets and, therefore, they can divest them at lower prices, since they receive other revenues that generate sufficient margins for them.

Original story: Expansión (by Salvador Arancibia)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Zriser Made a Profit of €14M from Sale of 2 Properties in 2016

5 January 2018 – Valencia Plaza

Inversiones Grupo Zriser, the company that groups together the rental assets of Ana and Pablo Serratosa (pictured below), closed 2016 with the sale of two properties that generated a profit of €14.3 million. That is according to the Directors’ Report in the company’s consolidated accounts, which shows that 2016 was a good year for the investment vehicle owned by the Serratosa siblings.

One of Zriser’s most important sales – at the beginning of 2016 – was the Generali building, located at number 29 Plaza del Ayuntamiento in Valencia, to the businessman Juan Luis Gómez-Trenor, who was the founder of the now extinct Colebega and shareholder of Coca-Cola Iberian Partner.

Zriser purchased the building from Generali Seguros for €29 million and sold it for more than €30 million, almost 50% more. The building, next door to the Town Hall, is located in the financial and retail centre of the city and houses the regional headquarters of Generali Seguros in the Community of Valencia and a branch of the company; the main tenant of the property is the law firm Garrigues.

The other property sold by Zriser in 2016 – in the month of November – is located on Paseo de Ruzafa 18 and is known for housing one of the first Berskha (an Inditex brand) stores in the centre of Valencia. That property has a surface area of more than 2,200 m2 spread over a basement level, commercial space and commercial mezzanine, plus four additional floors, measuring 400 m2 each in a strategic location and where Décimas opened. The two operations were advised by Olivares Consultores.

Turnover rose by 48% in 2016

Inversiones Grupo Zriser, where the siblings also consolidate their other investee companies, generated a turnover of €48 million in 2016, up by 48% compared to 2015, when the figure amounted to €32.4 million. An even greater improvement was seen in terms of profits, which rose from €598,770.15 in 2015 to €7.88 million in 2016.

The accounts also reflect some losses due to impairment as a result of the results obtained by certain companies and a failure to fulfil some of the business plans initially set out. That happened in the case of the machinery company Inrema for a value of €408,957; Punt Mobles XXI, for €974,561.34; and Auditorías de Medios SL, for €1.6 million.

In subsequent events, the accounts also highlight the sale in 2017 of the company Moldcom Composites (McBath), specialising in resin bath products, to Nazca Capital. In this regard, the financial statements indicate that the transaction generated “significant” profits for Zriser.

Original story: Valencia Plaza (by Estefanía Pastor)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Sabadell Seeks Investors to Develop More Than 2 million m2 of Land

28 December 2017 – Expansión

The bank, through Solvia, has spun off the management of assets worth €600 million into a new company, which will be headquartered in Madrid.

Solvia, the real estate management company of Sabadell, wants to replicate the operation that it carried out in the hotel sector earlier this year, when it sold its hotel business to Blackstone for €630 million, generating profits of €55 million.

As such, the entity has decided to carve out its activity relating to the development of land into a new company called Solvia Desarrollos Inmobiliarios. That company will manage 2.22 million m2 of land in total, equivalent to almost 300 football pitches. The construction of 4,000 homes, across more than 84 developments, is already underway.

The portfolio of assets under management amounts to €600 million, equivalent to approximately 15% of Solvia’s total income. That size places it in the second division in the sector, just behind the listed real estate companies, led by Metrovacesa, Neinor, Aedas and Vía Célere. The largest owner of land in Spain is Sareb.

This new company will be headquartered in Madrid and will be led by Francisco Pérez, former CEO of the Catalan property developer Vertix. “The idea is to grow hand in hand with the large overseas investors that are looking for high returns in Span, but which do not have any structure here. Most of the funding will come from outside of the country”, explains Javier García del Río, CEO of Solvia (pictured above).

The plans

Solvia Desarrollos will develop not only Sabadell’s land – the bank owns 83% of the portfolio – but also plots owned by family offices that the bank manages and the developments that Sareb is granting it. Solvia was one of the four entities chosen by the bad bank in 2014 to help it sell its homes to the general public. Specifically, it took over the problem loans proceeding from Bankia, Ceiss and Banco Gallego.

Sabadell has been developing land since 2013 and has grown a considerable business in that time. It was the first bank to get back on the horse after the real estate bubble burst. “Land is behaving magnificently, although we do not expect to see any abrupt growth. Areas that were very risky in 2013, such as Huelva, are no longer”, said García del Río.

The experts in the sector endorse his opinion. “The turning point in this market came in 2015 and 2016. This year has been exceptional, with more than 20,000 transactions involving land”, explains Samuel Población, National Director of Residential and Land at the consultancy firm CBRE. He calculates that property developers are capable of generating margins of between 18% and 22% from the construction of private housing blocks in Spain.

“The funds that left Spain have returned and investors are interested in buying land”, says José García Montalvo, Professor of Economics at the Universidad Pompeu Fabra and an expert in the real estate sector.

Solvia manages a portfolio of 148,000 real estate assets, whose value exceeds €31 billion. Last year, it generated a gross profit of €57.8 million and brokered the sale of 20,321 properties. Between 2011 and 2016, it sold more than 91,000 assets.

Sabadell granted new financing of €1.35 billion to property developers in 2016, up by 56%. Last year, it started granting property developer loans again in CAM’s area of influence after four years of restrictions imposed by Brussels.

Original story: Expansión (by R. Lander)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Ministry of Defence has Earned €28M from Property Sales since 2012

10 December 2017 – El Economista

The Ministry of Defence has obtained proceeds amounting to €28,382,264.77 in total (since 2012) from the sale of several properties that had been left in disuse in various Spanish autonomous regions and provinces.

That figure is reflected in a response from the Ministry (to which Servimedia has had access) to a question posed by the socialist members of parliament Miguel Ángel Heredia and Zaida Cantera to find out how much money has been obtained from the auction and sale of Ministry buildings from 2012 to date.

In its response, the Ministry of Defence explains that on 25 April 2012, it auctioned a building in Tarifa (Cádiz) that had housed a Residential Property for Non-Commissioned Officers for €1,408,676.99.

Meanwhile, on 5 November 2013, the Ministry sold the building that had housed the Armies’ Cultural Centre along with the property that hosted the Janer Naval Shooting School, both in Cádiz, for €881,880.22 and €6,754,907.15, respectively.

In turn, on 2 July 2015, the Ministry auctioned the building in which the ‘Son Simonet’ barracks used to be located, for €5,550,000; whilst on 5 November of the same year, it auctioned the headquarters of the Residential building for Non-Commissioned Officers in Palma de Mallorca for €6,311,003.07. Finally, on 2 December 2017, it sold a property located on Calle Velázquez, 107, in Madrid (pictured above) for €7,475,797.34.

Original story: El Economista

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA Sells Majority Stake in its Real Estate Portfolio to Cerberus for More Than €5bn

28 November 2018 – Voz Pópuli

BBVA has closed a real estate mega operation. The entity chaired by Francisco González has agreed to sell the majority of its problem assets to Cerberus, in a deal worth between €5 billion and €6 billion, according to financial sources consulted by Vozpópuli. The Spanish group will receive a cheque for between €3.5 billion and €4 billion for the majority stake in a new company that will be controlled by the US fund. After months of intense negotiations, the bank and the fund decided to seal the deal at the beginning of this week. Whilst we wait for the official figures to be made public, financial sources indicate that the real estate package for sale amounts to between €13 billion and €14 billion (as this newspaper revealed) and comprise around 70,000 properties. The assets sold are valued with a discount of around 60%. The parties involved all declined to comment.

The discount is lower than that agreed for the sale of Popular’s property, which amounted to 67%. Santander sold €30 billion with a valuation of €10 billion. Blackstone paid €5.1 billion for 51% of that company.

After signing the agreement, the two parties will request time to review the small print of the contract and to obtain the necessary authorisations. In this case, approval must be given by the Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGD).

According to the latest figures, BBVA has real estate exposure amounting to €17.8 billion on its balance sheet. Of that amount, foreclosed assets (€11.9 billion) and doubtful loans (€3.4 billion) account for €15.3 billion. Those loans and properties have a coverage ratio of more than 61%.

A sale like the one that Cerberus has agreed will leave BBVA as one of the largest groups with the smallest real estate exposure in Spain, something that investors and regulators have been demanding for years.

This agreement arose as a result of a meeting between González and the President of Cerberus worldwide, John W. Snow, at the beginning of July. The US banker – and former US Treasury Secretary, under the presidency of George Bush junior – proposed this operation to the President of BBVA after his firm was left out of the sale of Popular’s property.

The operation has been managed by the operations team at PwC, led by Jaime Bergaz. The law firms Linklaters and Ashurst have worked alongside him, and on the buy side, the consultancy firm Deloitte. All of the parties involved have been working on this operation non-stop for several months. The deal only came close to dying during the worst moments of the Catalan crisis, given that a lot of BBVA’s real estate assets are located in that region.

Following this acquisition, Cerberus consolidates its position as one of the largest real estate investors in Spain, alongside Blackstone. The fund controls Haya Real Estate, which manages assets on behalf of Sareb, Bankia, Cajamar and Liberbank. With BBVA’s assets, it takes on one of the most sought-after portfolios in the sector.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Jorge Zuloaga and Miguel Alba)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Banco Madrid’s Bankruptcy Administrators Put 17 Properties Up For Auction

15 November 2017 – Expansión

Today, the bankruptcy administrators of Banco Madrid are beginning the auction of 17 properties spread all over Spain. None of the properties has a minimum price but their combined appraisal value amounts to almost €30 million.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake