Investment Funds Seek Land for Student Residences in Sevilla, Málaga & Granada

13 May 2019 – ABC de Sevilla

According to CBRE Spain, many investment funds are searching for land in Sevilla, Málaga and Granada on which to build new halls of residence for students. Ideally, they want plots that are located close to the university campuses or in well-connected areas of those cities.

Specialist student residence companies are also in the market for land, such as the company Syllabus by Urbania, which is actively looking for new plots in Sevilla and Granada.

The British firm Amro is already working on two projects, in Granada and Sevilla, and is now searching for land in Málaga, as well as in Salamanca, Alicante, Bilbao and Barcelona.

Similarly, Greystar, which is building a 322-bed hall of residence in Málaga, also wants to expand its footprint in Sevilla and Granada.

Lack of beds for students

In Spain, there are 1.5 million students, of which around 600,000 do not live in their home towns or cities. Nevertheless, there are less than 100,000 beds available for students and they are primarily located in Madrid, Barcelona, Salamanca, Granada, Valencia, Málaga and Sevilla. Moreover, most of the existing supply is obsolete. The need to expand and renew the stock is clear.

Original story: ABC de Sevilla (by María Jesús Pereira)

Translation: Carmel Drake

The Market for Land Makes a Come Back in Valencia

25 March 2019 – El Mundo

The stars are aligning in the real estate sector in Valencia. Investors and developers alike are keen to get there hands on the raw material there – land. Activity in the segment is still well below its peak of the boom but the recovery is now well underway.

According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Development, during 2018, the number of land sale operations increased, as did the total surface area sold and the total amount of the transactions. The market for land is still on the rise, even though the average prices being paid for plots has decreased.

In this way, 1,884 land sales were completed in the Community of Valencia during 2018, up by 11.1% YoY, when 1,687 sales were recorded. That is the highest figure since just before real estate bubble burst – 3,199 operations were recorded across the three provinces in 2007.

In total, 3.9 million m2 of land was sold last year, compared with 3.35 million m2 in 2017. Not since 2007 has more land been transacted in a single year – 5.4 million m2 of land was sold in 2007.

In total, investment in urban land amounted to €373.5 million last year, compared to €345.7 million the previous year. That is the highest figure since 2009 when €512 million was invested.

Moreover, the outlook for the year ahead is positive. More and larger land purchases are forecast, although the stock of plots with the most potential is starting to run out.

In terms of prices, the average price per square metre fell by 18% in Q4 2018 in YoY terms to €149.6/m2. Nevertheless, the average price rose by 21.7% to €217.9/m2 in those municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in Alicante. That price compares very favourably with the average for municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants across the rest of Spain, where prices increased by 6.3% to €292/m2.

Original story: El Mundo (by F. D. G.)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

The PSOE Proposes that Town Halls Buy Homes to Rent Them Out

21 February 2019 – Eje Prime

The PSOE wants to create a public stock of rental homes, with reference prices, which will end up affecting market prices. To this end, in its framework program for the municipal elections to be held on 26 May, the party led by Pedro Sánchez is proposing that Town Halls purchase (already built) homes for rental, although without considering those that come from evictions executed by the banks.

The text reflects the “absolute priority” of creating a public rental stock that is “sufficiently large” with which to develop active policies that facilitate access to housing for citizens and which “affect the prices in the rental market”, according to reports from Europa Press (…).

In terms of public subsidies for the rental sector, the socialists propose taking into account the different life needs of each cohort, such as young people who want to buy their first home and older people who are looking for family consolidation projects. Similarly, they foresee the creation of a stock of rental homes for young people (…).

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation: Carmel Drake

Atlético de Madrid will Sell the Calderón Land in Q1 2019

2 February 2019 – Expansión

Following the demolition of the stadium, the club will be able to sell the plots where 600 homes are expected to be built.

The project to urbanise the Mahou-Calderón area, which will convert the surface area currently occupied by Atlético de Madrid’s former stadium into homes and tertiary use, has taken a step forward. Within the next few weeks, work is expected to start on the demolition of the Vicente Calderón, which will enable progress to take place with the reparcelling and subsequent sale of the land.

The Madrilenian club, owner of 50% of the surface area, will then be able to proceed with the sale of the land, which has a surface area of 14,866 m2 and a buildability of more than 63,000 m2. On this plot, between 550 and 600 homes may be built, with prices of around €6,000/m2.

Besides the Madrilenian club, the other owner of the land is Mahou San Miguel. The brewery company has not yet taken a decision regarding the sale of its share.

Candidates

Sources at the club have indicated to Expansión that several parties are interested in these plots, which constitute the last major stock of land left inside the M-30. The potential buyers of the plots include investment funds, property developers, joint ventures between the two and cooperatives. “We are holding very advanced negotiations with three of them with the idea of formalising the operation this quarter”, they state.

In terms of the timings, once work has started on the demolition of the stadium, which is expected to begin in the coming days, the reparceling project will continue, which will last for the months of February and March. Once the plots have been registered in the registry, they will be available for sale. The Project will carry out the urbanisation and building work at the same time in such a way that the homes could be ready within three or four years (…).

Original story: Expansión (by R. Arroyo & E. Santos)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Blackstone will be the Landlord of 25,000 Rental Homes by the End of 2019

31 January 2019 – Voz Pópuli

Blackstone, one of the largest investment companies in the world, expects to end the year with 25,000 rental homes under management in Spain.

Eduard Mendiluce (pictured above, left), the man from Blackstone who leads the US giant’s real estate emporium in Spain, has explained that the firm believes in the Spanish market, as it has done since 2014, and will end 2019 managing 10,000 more rental homes that it currently owns (15,000).

“We continue to believe in the fundamentals of the residential sector in Spain”, said Mendiluce at a conference about the real estate sector organised by Iese in Madrid. “Spain was one of the countries that suffered the most during the real estate crisis of 2008; prices are still 30% below their maximums”, he said.

The CEO of Aliseda and Anticipa explained that the US fund’s strategy in Spain in terms of real estate involves renting or buying and selling second-hand homes worth between €120,000 and €150,000. “When you have more than 200 homes under management in a given municipality, the business becomes profitable”, he explained.

Blackstone has invested almost €26 billion in the Spanish market over the last five years. In March 2014, it purchased 40,000 problem mortgages from Catalunya Caixa for €3.6 billion.

Since then, it has purchased: Banco Popular’s toxic property, together with Santander, for more than €5 billion; the Socimi Hispania for €2 billion; and 50.01% of the rental home Socimi Testa for €947 million. Last year, it bought Cirsa, a leading company in the gaming industry in Europe in a deal worth €2 billion.

In terms of the criticisms directed at the rental policies of Blackstone and other funds from certain sectors, Mendiluce has highlighted that in Spain, the funds own just 3% of the total rental housing stock, and that the rest is in the hands of individuals.

“I think that it is difficult to manipulate prices when you only account for a small percentage (of the market)”, he said. “I firmly believe that if there has been very concentrated price inflation in a handful of towns, then that has been due to a lack of supply”, and he pointed out that Spain has the lowest percentage of social housing in Europe.

Fashionable market

Juan José Brugera, President of the real estate company Colonial, was very optimistic about the real estate sector in Spain.

“We are in an expansive phase of the cycle, we are facing lower growth, but growth is growth, and it’s strong in Spain”, he said at the conference organised by Iese. “In the rental cycle, we are still in the growth phase, we have potential for rental growth that we believe ensures a strong performance over the next two or three years” he said.

“The Spanish market is fashionable at the moment, we predict expansive behaviour”, he said. “I have a positive vision, the stock market is behaving a bit strangely, but I think that is due to certain turbulences, both external and internal, that are generating uncertainty”.

Original story: Voz Pópuli (by Alberto Ortín)

Translation: Carmel Drake

BBVA Research: Building Permits for New Homes Double in 3 Years

12 November 2018 – Cinco Días

The recovery is being boosted by construction activity in the real estate sector. 2018 is going to close with the granting of more than 100,000 permits for the construction of new homes, which represents twice the number of permits granted in 2015, according to estimates from BBVA Research. During that year, activity in the sector started to recover, after years in free fall. The real estate construction segment is whereby returning to six-digit figures, something that has not been seen for eight years.

Until August, the most recent data available from the Ministry of Development, just over 68,000 permits had been granted, up by 26% compared to the same period last year. The data from that month reflects that it was the best August on record since 2008.

The sector may be recovering but it is still light years away from the property fever experienced a decade ago. To give some perspective, the 100,000 new build permits that are going to be granted this year are eight times fewer than the figure recorded in 2006, when the highest ever number of permits was issued (865,561). In April of that year alone, 126,753 permits were granted, a figure that comfortably exceeded the number expected to be issued during 2018 as a whole.

The exact opposite was seen in 2013, when the number of permits hit rock bottom: during that year, just 34,288 permits were granted, the absolute minimum in the whole historical series (whose data goes back to 1992). The following year, there was a slight increase in permits (of 2%) but it was not really until 2015 when the figures started to recover with any strength, up by 43% that year. Since then, the number of construction permits granted has followed a stable growth path, with YoY increases of around 25%.

According to the research from BBVA, the increase in permits forms part of the favourable context in which the market is developing. During the third quarter of the year, employment in the construction sector grew by 1.3%, loans for home purchases increased by 16.8% YoY and house sales in August were almost 10% higher than during the same month last year.

A large part of the still moderate and stepped growth in terms of construction permits is due to the fact that the number of leftover homes constructed during the bubble, which still have not been sold, is still “high and disproportionate for the levels of demand in six out of every ten provinces”. There are 1.2 million leftover homes in total, according to the statistical yearbook for the real estate market compiled by the consultancy firm Acuña & Asociados.

Nevertheless, that stock of homes is very dispersed throughout the country: the consultancy firm calculates that one third of those homes are located in areas with zero or very low demand, whereas in the main cities, new build homes are needed, something that is being confirmed by the significant increases in house prices.

Madrid is the city that accounts for the most building permits (both for new construction and renovation or refurbishment). So far this year, work has started to build or renovate 7,000 homes in the Spanish capital. It is followed, at a distance, by Barcelona, with just over 2,200 homes. Next in the ranking are Valencia (1,640), Málaga (1,400), Zaragoza (1,060), and Sevilla ( 830). Those six cities – which account for almost 20% of the population – account for 17% of all of the permits granted so far this year (…).

Original story: Cinco Días

Translation: Carmel Drake

5 Investors are Interested in Buying Sareb’s Rental Home Socimi Témpore

5 November 2018 – Cope

The bad bank has given interested parties until the middle of this month to submit their offers.

Sareb has received expressions of interest from five investors for the purchase of Témpore, its rental home Socimi, the third largest in the market by number of homes, given that it will have 3,357 homes once the bad bank has transferred it 850 homes in December.

That is according to Témpore’s CEO, Nicolás Saldaña (pictured above, right), who said that the firm has opened its books to those investors, who have until the middle of November to submit their offers.

According to Saldaña, one of those five investors is a firm that already operates in the rental home sector, whilst the others are specialist investment funds.

The eventual sale of Témpore by Sareb will serve as an alternative to the plan that it designed for the Socimi when it launched it at the end of last year, which involves leaping from the MAB to the main stock market “as soon as possible” to whereby exit its capital and “liquidate” the homes on its balance sheet.

Nevertheless, although the Socimi is up for sale, Témpore is going to maintain the condition of an additional liquidation channel for the portfolio of homes from Sareb with which it was constituted.

That is going to be possible given that, although Sareb is not the main shareholder of Témpore, the agreement that the two entities have, whereby the bad bank transfers assets to the Socimi, is going to continue to be valid until it expires in November 2020.

For the time being, once Témpore adds the 850 homes that Sareb is going to transfer to it in December, in what will constitute the first operation under the framework of that agreement, the Socimi will have a stock of 3,357 homes worth around €325 million.

According to its data, these figures make it the third largest rental home firm in the country after Blackstone, which after purchasing Testa, now owns a stock of 24,000 homes, and Azora, with 7,000 homes.

Original story: Cope 

Translation: Carmel Drake

CBRE: Office Leasing in Madrid Records Best Third Quarter for a Decade

17 October 2018 – Real Estate Press

The office market in Madrid recorded its best quarter of the year between July and September with almost 142,000 m2 of office space leased. That figure makes it the sector’s best third quarter for a decade, according to the latest data published by the real estate consultancy CBRE.

“Leasing figures during the third quarter are traditionally characterised by less activity due to the holiday period, so this latest data highlights the strength of the office market in Madrid”, says José Mittelbrum, National Director of A&T Investor Leasing Offices at CBRE España. “Looking ahead to the end of the year, it is very likely that, if some of the large deals currently active in the market are closed, then 2018 will see office leasing figures in Madrid very similar to those of 2017, which amounted to more than 600,000 m2, figures that have not been seen since 2007”, added Mittelbrum. Since January, almost 400,000 m2 of office space has been leased, the best figure since 2008.

Increase in rents

The increase in demand, boosted by demanding occupants with respect to the quality of the properties, and the reduction of the available supply, especially in renovated buildings and new properties in the central business district (CBD), led to a YoY increase of 9% in prime rents during the third quarter of the year to around €33/m2/month.

Empty space in high-quality Grade A buildings has decreased by 26% over the last year, which has led to situations of competition between several candidates for the same building.

Since the lowest point of the previous cycle, prime rents have grown by 35%. Other submarkets are also rising: average rents, calculated on the basis of actual operations, between July and September, increased in all submarkets with increases of more than 30% in the CBD and Secondary Centre (inside the M-30) and of between 15-20% on the Northern (A-1) and Eastern (A-2) axes of Madrid. Rising rents and the prospect that this trend will continue is one of the reasons why the office market in Madrid is the priority objective for a large number of domestic and international investors.

Notable operations

Madrid Norte saw significant activity in the last quarter, with two high-profile operations: the rental of the Oxxeo building in Las Tablas to Cap Gemini (9,300 m) and the rental of 7,000 m2 in Torre Chamartín by Deloitte; both new build properties.

The Public Sector reaffirmed its return to the Madrilenian office market, by closing two of the ten largest operations in the third quarter, namely, the rental of 4,200 m2 in the Agustín de Foxá, 25 building by the Ministry of Finance and of 2,400 m2 in Fray Luis de León, 11 by the Community of Madrid.

Finally, the flexible space operators continued their expansion: WeWork moved into Castellana, 77 to occupy more than 4,600 m2 in that building, the first to obtain the WELL Qualification in Spain. It is worth highlighting that so far this year, 10% of the office space leased in Madrid was taken up by flex-space companies, compared with 4% in the third quarter last year.

Available supply

At the end of September, the available surface area in the Madrilenian office market amounted to around 1.22 million m2, equivalent to 9.7% of the total stock of offices in the capital, compared to 11.7% a year earlier.

Over the coming months, investors’ commitment to reposition existing offices means that iconic buildings are going to come onto the market such as the Los Cubos building in Plaza de España and the Axis building in the heart of Plaza de Colón (…).

Original story: Real Estate Press

Translation: Carmel Drake

David Martínez: “Aedas Has Land on which to Build Homes for the next 4 Years”

8 September 2018 – Expansión

Aedas, the property developer in which the US fund Castlelake holds a stake, is continuing to push ahead and take on new challenges. As the first anniversary of its debut on the stock market approaches and with its business plan on track, the company is considering starting to buy plots of land that still require urban planning approval to anticipate possible price rises and improve margins, as well as to launch projects to sell to specialists companies in the rental sector, such as Socimis.

“We have a land bank spanning more than 1.5 million m2, which will allow us to build more than 14,000 homes. That gives us four years of visibility with respect to our business plan”, explains David Martínez, CEO of the company.

Aedas became the second largest property developer, after Neinor, to make its debut on the stock market after ten years of drought following the burst of the real estate bubble. It was followed shortly after by Metrovacesa, and several other companies are lining up to take the plunge, including Vía Célere and Aelca.

Aedas is sticking to the objectives announced in the listing brochure and unlike its rivals is not contemplating a reduction in its initial forecasts. “Our objective is to hand over more than 200 homes this year, more than 1,000 homes in 2019 and to exceed 2,000 homes in 2020. In total, by the end of 2020, we will have handed over more than 3,200 homes and we already have 114 developments underway, with more than 4,000 homes in different phases of development, which gives us a great deal of visibility over the objectives. We designed a realistic business plan and we will fulfil the forecasts for 2018, 2019 and 2020”, said the director.

Investment in land

The CEO of Aedas explains that during the first half of 2018, Aedas invested almost €100 million and purchased land for 1,905 homes, almost doubling the planned investment figure for the entire year. In addition, the company signed a corporate financing line for €150 million to continue expanding its land bank.

“We have detected interesting opportunities that fit with our investment criteria that are not going to be available in six months time. For that reason, we decided to bring forward our investment plan. Recently, we formalised a loan amounting to €150 million to provide us with sufficient financial resources to continue bringing forward the purchases planned in the business plan between now and 2023”, he explained.

At this point, Martínez opened the door to the possibility of purchasing non-finalist land. “There is a lot of land classified as “urbanisable” that still requires urban planning. Given that we now have land to cover our requirements for the next four years and we are not in any hurry, nor do we need to buy finalist land, we are considering land in areas with demand that has the partial plans approved but that still require some urban planning management”, he revealed.

Martínez highlighted that a significant percentage of the €150 million resulting from the loan formalised a few weeks ago will be used to buy non-finalist land. “With the economic recovery, new property developers are emerging who need to buy finalist land to get to work. For this reason, in some places, the prices of some plots of finalist land now exceed our expectations. We want to take advantage to buy land at more affordable prices even if that requires more management subsequently (…).

Rental

Similarly, the property developer is exploring other business opportunities, such as the sale of homes to Socimis and other vehicles specialising in the rental market. “One of the challenges involves supplying homes to young people. Aedas is exploring formulae that allow the construction of homes for rent, basically developing projects that we can sell to companies that specialise in rental. We have a very extensive and urban land bank”.

The director anticipates a “long” upwards cycle. “We are at the beginning of a cycle and notwithstanding the fact that we may see some adjustments in prices in certain specific towns, in general, it is going to last”, he predicted.

Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Aedas Puts 142 More Homes Up For Sale in its Largest Development in Sevilla

7 September 2018 – Eje Prime

Aedas Homes is starting its second round of sales in Sevilla. The property developer has just released 142 new properties on the market, located in the 1,046-unit residential complex that the company is building in the Andalucían capital.

After finding buyers for 70% of the 142 homes that comprise the first building, Aedas has now placed the properties from the second block on the market. The residential assets have a surface area of 80 m2 each on average and are on the market for, approximately, €122,800.

These 100-odd homes form part of the largest housing development that has ever been built in Spain. The large residential project, which is called Jardines Hacienda Rosario, will house 1,046 apartments distributed over seven blocks and will have more than 33,000 m2 of common areas.

Aedas Homes is continuing its commitment to Andalucía, but it is also present in other parts of the country. Currently, the company has a portfolio of buildable land amounting to more than 1.5 million m2. With that surface area, the company has the capacity to build almost 14,00 homes in the six areas of the country in which it operates: Centro, Andalucía, Costa del Sol, Cataluña, Levante and the Balearic Islands.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake