Tag: rental sector

La Generalitat Approves a Law that Provides for the Expropriation of Vacant Homes

5 March 2019 – La Vanguardia

The Government of Cataluña has approved a decree law establishing around thirty urgent measures to improve access to housing in the region.

The objective of the law is three-fold: to address the lack of social housing available for rent; to facilitate instruments to combat emergency situations and evictions; and to moderate increases in residential rental prices.

The measures range from fines to the expropriation of homes that have been empty for two years (from large property owners at a reduced price, which is no case may exceed 50% of the market price), to forcing the banks to rehouse in social housing properties any residents that they choose to evict.

Another measure in the pipeline, for introduction later this year, includes a plan to increase the minimum rental term, which currently stands at three years, to increase it to between six and ten years, depending on whether the owner is a private individual or a real estate company. Moreover, efforts are being made to limit rental price increases to CPI.

Original story: La Vanguardia (by Luis B. García)

Summary/Translation: Carmel Drake

New Legislation Stipulates that Residential Rental Contracts will Last for 5 or 7 Years

15 December 2018 – Expansión

On Friday, the Council of Ministers gave the green light to a royal decree of urgent measures relating to housing and the rental sector. The Minister for Development, José Luis Ábalos, highlighted that the majority of evictions occur due to a failure to pay the rent, whilst the number of mortgage foreclosures has decreased.

The main measures with respect to rental are: extending the term for the extension of leases, from three to five years – or up to seven years if the lessor is a legal entity – and increasing the term for tacit renewals from one to three years. Also, limiting the deposit to two months as a guarantee, facilitating agreements between tenants and owners to improve housing, management expenses shall be borne by the lessor when that is a legal entity, improving the remission of tourist rental contracts and horizontal ownership so that three fifths of the residents can limit tourist apartments, amongst other measures.

Nevertheless, the minister highlighted that this decree does not include measures aimed at intervening in rental prices, as had been agreed with Unidos Podemos in the budget agreement. However, he did not rule out that they may be included within the framework of the budget negotiations for next year.

For the time being, and precisely due to the absence of these measures in terms of prices, Pablo Iglesias has warned that the vote of his party to approve this decree-law will be “unfavourable”.

“We had agreed something else with them in the budgets, that the housing measures had to include controls over rental prices to decrease rental prices”, he said when the measures in the decree were made public.

“We hope that they are rectified so that we can go ahead with this decree, provided that it has the same content that we agreed”, added Iglesias, who also declared in a tweet that “the Government’s decree does not contain the most important measure from the agreement: that of prohibiting abusive increases in rental prices”.

Original story: Expansión

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone Publicly Criticises the Government’s Rental Housing Plan

13 November 2018 – Voz Pópuli

The company that has invested the most money in the Spanish real estate sector over the last five years, Blackstone, has publicly criticised the Government regarding its rental housing plan, which includes several measures that will directly impact the US company’s business in Spain.

Blackstone’s most senior representative in Spain, Claudio Boada, has warned that he views with “concern” the plans unveiled by Pedro Sánchez’s Government in this regard. Boada was speaking at a breakfast meeting this morning organised by the United States Chamber of Commerce in Spain (Amcham Spain) with the Minister for the Economy, Nadia Calviño, in attendance, at the Villa Magna Hotel in Madrid.

Claudio Boada, Senior Adviser at Blackstone for Spain and Portugal, was speaking after Calviño’s presentation, at a symposium led by Jaime Malet, President of Amcham Spain, and attended by more than fifty representatives of US companies in Spain. He warned that the US group regards with “concern” the plans unveiled by the Government for rental housing, and he pointed out that his company has invested €25 billion in the country in recent years “backing Spain during the worst years of the crisis”.

In particular, Boada referred to the project to return the duration of rental contracts to five years, versus their current duration of three years (as a result of the Urban Rental Law, dated June 2013), which will be applicable for physical persons. In those cases where the lessor is a legal entity, the minimum duration will be seven years.

The most senior representative of Blackstone in Spain, who attended the meeting together with Eduard Mendiluce, who leads the investment firm’s real estate business, requested channels of dialogue with the Minister for the Economy to address the matters.

The plan from the Government regarding rental homes affects the buoyancy of Blackstone’s core business in Spain. The company chaired by Stephen Schwarzman has been purchasing large packages of mortgages corresponding to more than 100,000 rental homes from Spanish banks over the last five years (…).

The group has taken advantage of the financial and real estate crisis to acquire those homes and mortgages at significant discounts, but it has taken the risk of making the operations profitable by trying to improve the management of those properties.

For Blackstone, whose motto is “buy, fix and sell”, its business involves renting out homes purchased at the most profitable prices possible taking into account the large discounts that it typically obtains upon acquisition. It also gets rid of tenants who do not pay their rent.

For this reason, the plans announced by the Government regarding rental homes affect the US group so much, given that far from making the rental sector more flexible, they would actually slow it down. Problem tenants, those who refuse to pay or leave a rental home, will presumably be given more time to dig their heels in (…).

Royal Decree on the horizon

“Blackstone has not threatened to stop investing in Spain”, said sources close to the investment company consulted by this newspaper at the end of the symposium organised by Amcham Spain. They added that the firm’s intention is very much to continue investing.

Nevertheless, the same sources indicated that Blackstone does require the possibility of entering into talks with the Administration to express its view regarding the rental policy, and that they believe that the Government will approve the new measures in this regard by Royal Decree this month. The company considers that there could be several alternatives reflected in the parliamentary procedure for the new regulation.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Alberto Ortín)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Juan Velayos: “Spain Needs to Create a Large Rental Player”

22 October 2018 – Eje Prime

Neinor Homes is going to reach “cruising speed” in 2019. The listed property developer is working to close the year with the delivery of almost 1,000 homes, half the number planned for next year. In the growth plan for the real estate company for the next few years, its CEO, Juan Velayos, does not rule out selling entire developments to a large rental home manager, a type of player that “Spain needs to create”, assured the director at a breakfast meeting held yesterday in Barcelona.

Velayos recognises that, for the time being, there are not any real estate companies specialising in rental “with such a large volume that would allow them to offer us an attractive margin, but we would be delighted to negotiate with any of them”.

The possibility of expanding its portfolio of clients through agreements with large asset managers could prove attractive for one of the property developers with the largest land bank in Spain and which forecasts starting to hand over 4,000 homes per year from 2020 onwards.

In total, the listed company has buildable land on which to construct 13,500 homes spread over 180 developments all over the country. The external valuation of this portfolio amounts to €1.813 billion, according to sources at Neinor.

“The company has already started to hand over homes and generate a positive cash flow and result”, highlights Velayos. The property developer currently has cranes at sixty developments, which will introduce 5,000 homes onto the market. Following the latest purchases of land in Bilbao, Sevilla and Madrid, “we have the land bank covered until 2021”, confirms the director.

In financial terms, Neinor recorded revenues of €78.9 million during the six months to June. That figure reflects a lot of activity in the marketing area. As at 30 September, the property developer had pre-sold 3,000 of the 7,000 homes that it had on the market, resulting in revenues of more than €1 billion for the company controlled by the Israeli fund Adar Capital.

“We will reach cruising speed in 2019”.  

Velayos trusts that the increase in productivity this year will allow Neinor to reach “cruising speed in 2019”. Next year, the listed company will have more than 120 developments underway, with a percentage of pre-sales that already exceeds 75%.

On this roadmap to lead the Spanish residential segment, Neinor trusts “wholeheartedly” in Cataluña, confirmed Velayos. It represents the firm’s current “star” location, as proven by the fact that 50% of the 5,000 homes that the property developer currently has under construction in Spain are located in this region and, primarily, in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.

“We are working on quite a few operations in the first ring”, said the director. In terms of the profile of the property developer’s buyers in Cataluña, young couples stand out, accounting for 39% of its customers, ahead of families with children (33%). In this sense, it is worth noting that 15% of its clients are investors, a percentage that exceeds Neinor’s average at the national level (11%).

Regarding the moratorium that Ada Colau is planning to launch in Barcelona, and which will oblige 30% of all new developments to be reserved for social housing, Velayos is clear: “That measure will not affect us because we won’t buy land in Barcelona” (…).

Original story: Eje Prime (by Jabier Izquierdo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Azaria Rental Debuts on the MAB with a €125M Investment Plan

25 September 2018 – Eje Prime

Azaria Rental made its debut on the stock market today with the clear intention of expanding its asset portfolio. The Socimi, specialising in the rental market and managed by Drago Capital, started trading at a price of €5.40 per share, which means that its valuation amounts to €45 million, according to a statement filed by the company with the Alternative Investment Market (MAB).

On its first day on the MAB, the Socimi confirmed its plan to search for new investment opportunities to increase returns for its shareholders. Specifically, according to Mayte Medina, CEO of Drago Capital, the firm’s future acquisitions are expected “to amount to €125 million in total”.

Currently, Azaria Rental owns just one asset: a 100% stake in Bifur Investments, the owner of the industrial and office complex located at number 40 Calle Miguel Yuste in Madrid, which houses the headquarters of the El País newspaper. The property spans a surface area of 46,480 m2 and comprises five buildings, leased to the Prisa group until 2033 for €4.9 million per year, according to Expansión.

Azaria Rental is the 19th Socimi to debut on the MAB so far this year. The objective of the company is to create a real estate investment vehicle to generate returns of between 4% and 5%, “from rental contracts with a net triple income profile over the long-term”.

Meanwhile, Drago Capital is a real estate asset management company that operates in the Spanish market as well as in the United States of America. Founded in 2001 by a group of professionals from the sector, it has offices in Madrid, Lisbon and Miami.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Spain’s New Government Proposes an Action Plan to Alleviate the Rental Market

18 June 2018 – El Confidencial

The rental market is, without doubt, the issue that Pedro Sánchez, the new President of Spain, and José Luis Ábanols, the new Minister for Development, will have to face in light of the price boom being experienced in certain areas of the country. According to sources close to the PSOE, the new Executive is going to focus its housing policy on: facilitating access to rental homes for young and older people; and curbing the rise in house prices, leaving to one side those measures destined to buying a home (…). For this, the new Executive is going to need support from other parliamentary groups, including Podemos, which is amongst its main allies, with very similar proposals to those put forward by the socialists to tackle the rental problem.

In terms of the State Housing Plan for 2018-2021 approved in March, when the Government was still under the mandate of the PP, the same sources confirm that the agreements with the autonomous regions have not yet been signed and, therefore, its execution is still pending (…).

Rental prices are the most pressing issue of the day. During Mariano Rajoy’s mandate, not only was it in the background, but also several draft bills presented to the Congress to tackle the boom in rental prices were defeated. The first one that failed to pass Congress’s filter was the Platform for those Affected by Mortgages (PAH), whilst proposals put forward by the PSOE were also initially vetoed by the PP, although the veto was not only not ratified, it was also lifted last Friday and so it will return to parliamentary debate, where a consensus with the other political parties will be needed to push it ahead.

The socialists propose restoring the duration of five-year rental contracts, limiting rental price rises – in the case of renewals – to the evolution of CPI, as well as introducing significant tax relief for those who decide to rent their homes below certain thresholds or by limiting the deposits required. All of these proposals are susceptible to being supported by the political parties that supported Pedro Sánchez’s no-confidence motion, in particular, Podemos (…).

Limiting rentals

(…). In its proposal, the PSOE is committed to offering tax incentives to those landlords who let out their flats on the basis of a public price reference system, depending on the area in which their property is located. Such a system would have to be fixed by the town halls. All landlords who respect those limits could benefit from a 60% deduction on their income tax returns (…).

To facilitate access to rental housing for young people, the PSOE proposes that if a home is let to a young person aged between 18 and 30 on a low income, then the tax treatment available to the landlord would be even more favourable, with deductions of 100% (…).

Original story: El Confidencial (by E. Sanz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Price Rises Continue To Rock Spain’s Rental Home Sector

6 June 2017 – El Mundo

The housing market is trembling and not, like in the past, because of the high degree of sale and purchase activity. The residential sector in Spain is facing an unprecedented phenomenon: a boom (not a bubble) in the rental sector. In a short space of time, this residential regime has gone from being almost residual to accounting for more than 20% of the housing market. And that figure is rising. This leap is driving up prices, significantly. Above all in Madrid and Barcelona.

According to the experts, a change in the mentality of young people and employment mobility are the main factors driving this formula for accessing a home. (…).

Not since the 1960s has the percentage of rental properties been so high in Spain, but, despite the increase, the figure is still well below the levels seen in other European countries – which reach 50% in some places – although it is moving closer to the Eurozone average – 30%. (…).

The cornerstone of this growth in rental properties has been the spectacular boom in demand, which has come up against an unprofessionalised sector, with minimal supply owned, primarily, by individuals. The real estate portal Fotocasa now registers more searches for property rentals than it does for property purchases. The result of this imbalance? An earthquake in terms of prices. How long will this earthquake last? Where are its epicentres? What intensity will it reach? What measures should be taken to soften its effects? (…).

The latest evidence of the rental earthquake has come in the form of the Fotocasa’s price statistics for April, which show that the average rent in Spain rose by 10.2% in one year, to €8.04/m2/month. That cost takes the market back to its 2011 levels but it is still well below (-20.7%) the peaks of 2007 (€10.12/m2/month). (…).

“It is a question of supply and demand”, said Economist and Director of the Masters in Real Estate Development and Management Advisory at the Universidad de Barcelona (UB), Gonzalo Bernardos. “Demand is increasing due to the recovery. There are more jobs and, therefore, more families and young people as potential tenants. By contrast, the supply is decreasing (…)”. In his opinion, this situation will change when the banks start lending again en masse to families who earn less than €2,500/month. “From then on, maybe from 2018 onwards, the rental sector will suffer, as demand will transfer to the purchase market”, he said. (…).

Fotocasa has prepared a seismic map of the rental market. It reveals the evolution of rental prices by autonomous region. Prices decreased in YoY terms in Galicia only (in April) (by -0.7%), whilst they rose in all of the other regions, with marked rises in Cataluña (17%), Madrid and the Balearic Islands (12.1% in both). Together with the Canary Islands (11.9%), these regions are undoubtedly the large epicentres of the increase in rental prices.

“The increase in rental prices is happening across the whole country, but the strong average increase is due to Cataluña and Madrid”, said Beatriz Toribio, Head of Research at Fotocasa. “According to our Real Estate Index report for 2016-2017, these two regions account for 43% of the activity relating to demand”, she said.

In absolute terms, the most expensive rental prices are also in Cataluña, where the price per m2 stands at €11.96/month. In other words, a typical apartment measuring 90 m2 costs around €1,075/month. Next in the ranking, and still in the double digits, are Madrid (€11.36/m2/month), País Vasco (€10.59/m2/month) and Baleares (€10.05/m2/month). These values are even higher in the main municipalities.

Barcelona – the great tip of the iceberg

(…). In the city of Barcelona, the average rental price amounts to €15.14/m2/month. That amount is higher than the figures registered in Sant Cugat del Vallés (€13.61/m2/month) and Castelldefels (€13.58/m2/month), the next two most expensive towns for rental properties in Spain. In Madrid and San Sebastian, rental prices stand at €12.81/m2/month and €11.96/m2/month, respectively. (…).

The analyst at Fotocasa thinks that rental prices will regulate themselves over time. “We are still well below the peaks. The market is normalising”, she concludes. Meanwhile, Bernardos predicts that the rate of growth in rental prices will gradually calm down in Barcelona and Madrid. He forecasts price rises of 12%, 9% and 5%-6% over the next three years in the capital and of 8%, 5% and 3%-4% in Barcelona. (…).

Original story: El Mundo (by Jorge Salido Cobo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Landlords Demand Revival Of Express Evictions For Rental Homes

6 December 2016 – Cinco Días

The u-turn made by Mariano Rajoy’s first Government regarding housing policy was accompanied by several draft legislative changes. In this way, in 2012 the Ministry of Development decided to stop financing the construction of subsidised homes (VPO) for ownership, to focus instead on boosting the rental sector (Spain is one of the countries with the lowest percentage of households living in rental properties in Europe) and the renovation of homes.

To this end, in 2013, it undertook a comprehensive reform of the Urban Leasing Law (LAU), which provided for the speeding up of the periods for processing evictions, amongst other things, with the aim of making it possible for owners to recover their homes sooner once judges order tenants to leave properties due to non-payment.

Nevertheless, in the opinion of some operators in the sector, the results, more than three years later, are quite disappointing given that the processes that culminate in the eviction of delinquent tenants are still taking between eight and nine months on average. That is now the main concern for many landlords.

“In a market in which demand clearly exceeds supply, the most urgent thing is to provide more legal security for the owners of homes that are susceptible to being rented out and to implement new incentives that favour both landlords and tenants who fulfil all their obligations”, said David Caraballa, Commercial Director at the brokerage company Alquiler Seguro.

In this sense, that company is demanding three specific measures: the approval of new incentives for leasing in the form of IPRF exemptions; the regulation of tourist rentals; and the creation of specific courts to handle cases involving non-payments and evictions.

In the case of tax incentives, Alquiler Seguro explains that during the last legislature, not only were incentives increased to encourage more owners to lease their properties, but also the fiscal pressures that they have to bear have increased, given that some of the benefits that they used to enjoy (such as from leasing homes to people younger than 35 years old) have disappeared. In this regard, they consider that it is very important that these exemptions be recovered and that progress be made in this vein so that leasing a home is attractive from a tax point of view, like acquiring a property used to be.

The second aspect that requires urgent reform, in Alquiler Seguro’s opinion, is the tourist rental sector. “There is a legal vacuum and a disparity in the rules between those autonomous regions that have decided to introduce regulations, which means that we have clients who admit that it is more profitable for them to rent their properties to tourists than as regular homes”, explained Caraballo. In this sense, the firm is in favour of emulating actions such as the one carried out in New York, where the minimum period for renting a tourist flat has now been set at one month.

In terms of the third aspect, Sergio Lusilla, Managing Partner at Pluslegal Abogados, says that although the timeframes for resolving evictions have been reduced (before the reform of the LAU such cases could take more than two years), the current average of 8-9 months could be reduced to just three with an increase in human resources dedicated to the activity.

“I think that a term of three months would be reasonable for both parties. On the one hand, the owner would recover his home without having to wait as long to put it up for rent again, and, on the other hand, it would give social services sufficient time to analyse the case of the tenant who is unable to pay the rent and take a decision in that regard”, said Lusilla.

Original story: Cinco Días (by Raquel Díaz Guijarro)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Risk Of A Bubble In The Rental Home Market?

4 November 2016 – El Mundo

The rental sector stopped being the bad guy the movie about the residential market a long time ago. Following the burst of the real estate bubble in 2008,  this option for accessing a home (so vilified in previous decades and so closely linked to numerous prejudices in a country where the ownership culture was deeply entrenched) quickly became an attractive an option. Its popularity has been so great that rental housing now accounts for more than 20% of the residential stock and that figure is on the rise. So much so, there are now concerns in the sector about the risk of a bubble.

The EU office for statistics, Eurostat, states that the percentage of the Spanish population living in rental homes now amounts to 21.8% and Spain’s National Institute for Statistics (INE), in its Continuous Household Survey for 2015, said that the figure amounts to 22.7% – the percentage is even higher in major cities such as Madrid and Barcelona -. If we look at this with some perspective, we see that the number of tenants has soared since 2007, when they accounted for just 6% or 7% of all dwellings.

Although perhaps most importantly, beyond the numbers, is the change in attitude towards renting. Nowadays, the hackneyed expression that renting is throwing money down the drain is no longer heard, and Spain is becoming more European in this sense. Currently, the national percentage of renters in Spain is higher than in Norway (17.2%) and is getting close to the levels seen in Portugal (25.1%), Greece (26%), Italy (26.9%), Belgium (28.6%) and Sweden (30.7%). Nevertheless, it is still a long way below the level in Switzerland, where more than half of inhabitants rent their homes (55.5%) and Germany (47.5%) (…).

Meanwhile, Servihabitat has published the first indicator that points to a boom. According to a study by the servicer’s investigation and market analysis platform, the average rental price is expected rise by more than 10% in 2016. Moreover, in the provinces of Málaga, Barcelona, Gerona and Alicante and in the uniprovincial communities of the Balearic Islands and Madrid, rental price increases are expected to exceed the average.

One of the most qualified people to talk about this situation in the rental segment is the firm Alquiler Seguro, which was established in 2007 and which nowadays brokers and manages tens of thousands of rental contracts all over Spain. The President of the company, Gustavo Rossi, acknowledges that the risk of a bubble does exist, above all, in the major cities and in the most touristy areas. “In those enclaves, the supply is insufficient for the demand that exists and, therefore, we see bull markets, with rental prices on the rise. If demand continues to grow and supply continues to stagnate, then we may see a price bubble”, he warned. Nevertheless, he points out that this possible bubble “would not be anything like the one seen with owned properties, when the construction sector stopped focusing on housing needs and took decisions based purely on speculation targets.

Antidotes to avoid the boom

To avoid the threat of a boom, Rossi advocates reactivating the supply, both from individuals as well as from property developers and investors. “The first step would be to put closed housing on the market and regulate the high flow of tourist homes”, he suggests. Similarly, he argues that “we should advance more in the professionalization of the sector to allow owners to lose their fear of renting. He also supports the need for Local Governments to commit to the rental sector “by creating specific courts to rapidly resolve conflicts and boost tax benefits for both owners and tenants, preferably via the income tax framework, and at the same time bring those rents that are submerged in the black market up to the surface”.

The forecasts for rental price increases are starting to cause problems, especially for renters. Currently, good tenants (those who pay on time), so sought after in recent years, are no longer the treasures they once were because the demand for quality is increasing. Some landlords, aware that rental prices are rising, are becoming increasingly less flexible and harsh with their current tenants, for example, when it comes to signing tacit contract renewals or granting ad hoc requests. (…).

In terms of prices, Servihabitat estimates that the average rental cost in Spain amounts to €540 for a home measuring 80m2 to 90m2, with significant variations depending on the autonomous region. In this way, the most expensive average rents are charged in the Balearic Islands (€980/month), the Community of Madrid (€940), Ceuta (€880) and País Vasco (€840), whereas the cheapest rents are paid in Galicia (€280), Extremadura (€370) and Castilla-La Mancha (€380). The servicer also identifies the trend in rental prices, which it describes as increasing in every autonomous region with the exception of Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Navarra, Asturias and Ceuta and Melilla, where prices are stable. (…).

Original story: El Mundo

Translation: Carmel Drake

INE: House Sales Recorded Historical 16.4% Increase In H1

4 August 2016 – Expansión

House sales rose by 16.4% during the first half of 2016 compared with the same period in 2015, according to data published yesterday by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE). It is the largest increase registered during the first six months of the year since official records began (2004). A double digit increase was also recorded in 2010, but that amounted to 10.7%, well below the current figure.

Between January and June, 207,116 residential properties were sold, i.e. 29,000 more than a year earlier. In other words, an average of 1,138 homes were sold every day. If the current trend continues, house sales will surpass the 400,000 threshold for the first time since 2010. And 2010 was the last year when more than 1,000 homes per day were sold, on average.

The autonomous region that leads the ranking of house sales growth is the Balearic Islands, where sales grew by 38% during the first half of the year. It is followed by Murcia (+24.9%), País Vasco (+22.6%) and Castilla-La Mancha (+21.1%). All of Spain is now out of the red; in fact, all of the autonomous regions recorded double-digit increases apart from La Rioja (+6.7%).

Andalucía, Cataluña, Madrid and Comunidad Valenciana account for 64% of the market, in other words, for two out of every three homes sold. (…).

“The reasonable cruising speed for the sector is between 450,000 and 500,000 sales per year”, says José García Montalvo, Professor of Applied Economics at the University Pompeu Fabra. Although the “YoY increases are high, given that they are calculated on the basis of low base levels”, there is no doubt that the residential market is recovering, gradually, to reasonable figures, thanks to: the push from private investors who are buying homes to put them on the rental market; foreigners who are committing to Spanish real estate; and, finally, the slight improvement in traditional demand for housing, which during the worst years of the Crisis was pent up and moved to the rental sector, as people were unable to access mortgage loans and/or were limited by job insecurity.

“The rise of the rental market is generating demand for housing, because more investors are purchasing properties to put them up for rent”. Therefore, “we are never going to see a return to traditional levels of home ownership (85%). Rental properties will end up accounting for 25%-30% of the total market, a reasonable proportion that is comparable to the levels seen in other countries in our environment”, adds García Montalvo.

During the month of June, 36,856 homes were sold, up by 19.4% compared with a year earlier. (…).

Original story: Expansión (by Juanma Lamet)

Translation: Carmel Drake