In April this year the number of homes sales recorded by the Spanish Land Registry surged by 31%, compared to the same month in 2017, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Property portal Idealista.com published its own statistics on price increases, which show an increase of prices by nearly 0.8% for the month of May, compared to May 2017, thanks to booming demand. Year-on-year, resale house prices rose by 7.8%, according to the portal’s own data. International property experts Lucas Fox estimated that in the first two months of 2018 alone some 90,000 Spanish homes were sold. According to INE, 37,930 home sales were registered with the Land Registry in April of this year. The total figure was 42,041, including VPO or subsidised homes. Homes sales are registered with the Land Registry in Spain between one and three months following the sale of a Spanish property, so there’s always a certain amount of inaccuracy about the actual monthly figures. The Association of Spanish Notaries publish their own records, which are more accurate with regard to timing. The Association’s figures for April showed a rise of 11.6% to 48,415, which includes VPO properties. The market is still led by […]

15 June 2018 – Eje Prime Land is getting cheaper in Spain. The price per square metre of urban land decreased by 2.6% during the first quarter of the year, to €163.1/m2. Nevertheless, land prices rose by 6.6% with respect to December, according to data from the Ministry of Development. The Land Price Statistics prepared by the public body also indicate that the volume of land sold between January and March 2018 amounted to 7.8 million m2, with a value of €770.6 million. With respect to the same period a year earlier, the volume of urban land transferred was 36.7% higher and its value had risen by 12.9%. The total number of transactions undertaken during the first three months of the year was 4,867, up by 10.6% compared to a year earlier, when 4,401 plots were sold, and down by 16.7% compared to the number of operations completed between October and December 2017. Original story: Eje Prime Translation: Carmel Drake The post Ministry of Development: Urban Land Prices Fell by 2.6% in Q1 2018 appeared first on Aura Real Estate Experts. Source:: AURA Real Estate Experts

18 June 2018 – Eje Prime The historical firm Nyesa is building homes again in Spain. The group has purchased two plots for residential use in Madrid for €3.6 million. Located in Vicálvaro, in the southeast of the Spanish capital, the plots have a buildable surface area of 5,700 m2, according to explanations provided by the company. On this land, the real estate company is going to build private housing in its return to the domestic residential market. Having returned to the stock market in January, after six years of lethargy and emerging from creditors’ bankruptcy, Nyesa is going to build flats in El Cañaveral, “one of the largest urban developments in Spain, with a surface area of 5.3 million m2 and plans for 14,000 new homes to be built in the area over the coming years”, said the group. This new project represents the relaunch of the group’s real estate development division, which has projects underway in Russia and Costa Rica. Listed on the stock market since 1989, its largest shareholders include Grupo Gaber, which controls 23.97% of the company; Grupo Eldarov, owner of 13.88%; Aqualdre, owner of 12.29%; and Fanumceo and Andrei Ivanov with smaller stakes of 8.97% […]

18 June 2018 – Eje Prime Quonia is gaining ground in the south of Spain. The Catalan Socimi has taken positions in Sevilla, where it already owns some assets, with the purchase of a building on Calle Antonio Salado. The acquisition price amounted to €5.6 million and includes the property and adjacent units at numbers 2, 6 and 12 Calle San Antonio, according to a statement filed by the company with the MAB. In total, the operation involves a surface area of 3,541 m2, taking into account the property and the adjacent units. The building is currently vacant and is awaiting refurbishment, in which Quonia plans to invest €3.2 million before leasing it out. The Socimi has financed the acquisition through a combination of own funds and debt. Quobia has obtained a mortgage loan from Banco Popular amounting to €4 million, with monthly repayments over a ten-year term and a capital repayment of 30% at the end of that period. In February, Quonia obtained another loan from Banco Popular, in that case amounting to €1.5 million, to renovate the building that it owns at number 4 Calle San Vicente. That property has a surface area of 3,500 m2. Led by […]

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 […]

17 June 2018 – Expansión Land sales closed over the last year, between April 2017 and March 2018, amounted to €3.59 billion, up by 22.4% compared to the previous twelve months. That figure also represented a maximum for at least the last five years, according to data from the Ministry of Development. The increase in land investments results from the growth in the number of land-based transactions completed and also from a rise in the surface areas sold, given that the prices recorded decreased. The growth in the market for land has been driven by the investment plans that the main real estate companies are carrying out, especially listed firms such as Neinor, Aedas and Quabit. They are aiming to fulfil their home building targets, which include strategic plans to take advantage of the increase in demand and the boom in the sector. Specifically, land sale operations sored by 17.5% in the twelve months to March 2018, to 21,255 transactions. In these operations, a total of 29.50 million m2 of land changed hands, a surface area that exceeds the volume bought and sold during the previous twelve months by 26%. Despite that acceleration in the land market, land prices continued […]

15 June 2018 The real estate company will develop a new prime project in Torre en Conill, a luxury home development located in Bétera (Valencia). The venture will consist of luxury homes and a 500-square-meter commercial centre. Luxury is reinforcing its presence in Valencia’s real estate market. The Grupo Zar will develop prime housing and a shopping centre in the luxury development Torre en Conill, located in Bétera (Valencia). The shopping centre, which will be called Island, will have an area of ​​500 square meters and will provide “complementary services to the residential area, which today has more than 1,100 homes”, the project’s developer, Sergio Zaragoza, highlighted. The company in Zaragoza wants to take advantage of “the potential population growth in the development,” the businessman explained, estimating that the residential complex will add another 2,700 new homes. Seven of the new homes will have Zar’s stamp, which is already selling villas from its latest project. These homes will have five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a swimming pool and private garage spread over 350 square meters of constructed area. The prices of the houses start at 546,000 euros without VAT. Currently, Grupo Zar has another ongoing development consisting of six single-family homes. […]

15 June 2018 The old Poblenou plant will hold on to the old factory’s principal architectural elements while being transformed into a modern office building. The office will be rented to small and medium-sized businesses. Carmen Godia is investing in Barcelona’s real estate sector. The businesswoman will develop an almost 9,000-square-meter building in the old Canem factory, on Calle Doctor Trueta, in the centre of [email protected] Between the purchase of the site and the construction of the new building, the investment will total about 22 million euros. The old Poblenou plant will maintain the architectural elements of the old factory, but it will be transformed into a modern building to be rented to small and medium-sized companies, offering offices with areas running from 200 to 600 square meters, Expansión reported. The Canem factory was built by Carlos and Bartolomé Godó in the 19th century. During the war, it became a provisional prison, and in 1964 it was sold to the Ribera family. Godia bought it from Popular before Santander absorbed it. It will be the second office building that Carmen Godia has built in [email protected] In 2005, the businesswoman built one of the first modern office buildings in the Poblenou […]

15 June 2018 The group, pressured by its partner, put three shopping centres on sale in Spain. It plans now to bid to keep the three on its own in a deal valued at €500MM, achieving liquidity through the sale of similar assets in Portugal. The shopping centre giant, Sonae Sierra, has decided to go to the market twice in one go. The company, whose hand has been forced by its partner, the fund manager CBRE Global Investors, has started the process of selling Gran Casa (Zaragoza), Valle Real (Cantabria) and Max Center (Vizcaya) in Spain. However, several sources confirmed that the Portuguese group does not share the American fund’s desire to sell, although it has had to accept the sale after the completion of the original investment period. The company has now decided to bid for the three shopping centres itself, with the advantage that it already owns 50% of the capital. In parallel, and perhaps as a way to obtain liquidity, Sonae has decided to sell RioSul Shopping, a mall with 44,475 square meters of gross leasable area in ​​the Portuguese city of Seixal (Setúbal), where it and its partner, Rockspring, each own 50% of the capital in […]

If you happen to own an overseas property and you incur debts on this property, this may well affect your chances of purchasing another property back home. For example, if you do not pay your obligatory service charge or community fee in Spain or any other property related tax, you could end up losing your foreign property as a result and be unable to buy a property in your home country. If, for example, you are letting out your Spanish or overseas property to tenants and they default on the rent, lawyers you appoint will try to recover monies for you in accordance with Spanish or other overseas laws. Spanish authorities, for example municipalities owed community fees, are now employing law firms to collect such debts. Your Spanish holiday home or investment property could be sold at auction to recover whatever debts are held against the property, if you default on payments to the municipality and tax authorities. Most law firms will be able to deal on your behalf buying or selling property, but not all deal with debt collection. However, gradually more law firms are beginning to offer multilingual debt collection services. You may have to give them a […]

16 June 2018 The bank’s real estate exposure in Spain will fall to almost nil by the end of this year, after having been reduced by some 21 billion euros over the last two years. BBVA is taking its last steps in its quest to eliminate the risk stemming from the toxic assets it inherited from the swift end of the real estate bubble. Yesterday, the bank finalised the sale of a portfolio of loans to developers valued at approximately 1 billion euros to the Canadian pension fund CPPIB, sources in the financial industry stated. It is the largest sale of a specialised portfolio of loans to developers in the Spanish market. The developments included in the transaction, baptised Sintra, can be found throughout Spain. The financial institution had been probing the interest of opportunistic funds since the end of 2017, looking to rid itself of a portfolio valued at a gross amount of about 1.5 billion euros, as reported by Expansión. Large funds, such as Lone Star, Blackstone and Apollo, were believed to have been interested in such credits, which are tied to real assets. PwC advised the bank on the transaction. Official sources at BBVA declined to comment. […]

The number of Spanish home sales inscribed in the Land Registry shot up by 31% in April compared to the same time last year, according to figures just released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). However, Easter fell in (more…) The post Home sales surge in April, partly due to seasonality appeared first on Spanish Property Insight. Source:: Spanish Property Insight

A frequently asked question we get at EU Property Solutions is whether an overseas property debt issue can affect your ability to buy property in the United Kingdom or your home country. There are circumstances in which it might. The (more…) The post Can overseas property debt affect my chances of buying a property back home? appeared first on Spanish Property Insight. Source:: Spanish Property Insight

15 June 2018 – Expansión Grupo Hotusa is continuing to increase its portfolio of assets under ownership. The corporation chaired by Amancio López Seijas has purchased the Hotel Eurostars Gran Valencia, which the company has been managing through its hotel chain Eurostars. The investment firm Atitlán – led by Aritza Rodero and Roberto Centeno, son-in-law of the owner of Mercadona, Juan Roig – was the owner of 66% of the hotel, according to explanations from market sources speaking to Expansión. The hotel, located in the upper part of Torre Ademuz, has 110 rooms and a 4-star rating. Specifically, the Eurostars Gran Valencia occupies the upper floors of the building located on Avenida de las Cortes in Valencia, between the Palacio de Congresos and the future Nou Mestalla stadium. Horwath HTL has advised the sales process, which began last year and which has been delayed for months due to the complexity involved. Other purchases In addition to the Hotel Eurostars, the building houses two hotels owned by Ilunion, which used to be managed by Accor, as well as a gym and a parking lot. With this operation, Grupo Hotusa is taking another step in the framework of its expansion and purchasing […]

14 June 2018 – Eje Prime Pavasal is taking advantage of the good times in the logistics sector embark on its growth strategy. The Valencian construction firm is adding almost 175,000 m2 of surface area to the logistics market in three large operations in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Last week, the group signed an agreement with the engineering firm Aspor to develop 35,000 m2 of land in Ribarroja. Besides the complex in Valencia, Pavasal is also immersed in two more projects with the fund Invesco for the development of logistics land in Madrid and Barcelona. In the Spanish capital, the group is going to build a 90,000 m2 logistics park, which will involve an investment of €80 million, whilst in Cataluña, the company is finalising the hand over of a large platform measuring 49,500 m2 in Abrera (Barcelona). The project in Madrid will result in the construction of the logistics complex with the largest available surface area in the Spanish capital. Last year, the sector invested €1.5 billion in assets, a historical maximum, and experts expect similar numbers to be recorded in 2018. Original story: Eje Prime Translation: Carmel Drake The post Pavasal to Build 175,000m2 of Logistics Space in […]

14 June 2018 – Eje Prime The real estate company Lanca is strengthening its logistics business. The company has just completed the construction of a logistics warehouse at number 35 Calle Eduardo Torroja, on the Butarque Industrial Estate in Leganés. The Basque real estate group has been working for the Iparvending Group once again, investing €2.5 million in the construction of a turnkey industrial warehouse for the leading automatic food distribution group. The operation has been brokered by Inverpremium. Work on the asset was completed in April. The Basque real estate group is continuing with its strategic expansion plan to 2020, looking for new real estate investment opportunities involving premises, offices, industrial warehouse and plots of land. Original story: Eje Prime Translation: Carmel Drake The post Lanca Invests €2.5M in the Construction of a Logistics Warehouse for Iparvending Group appeared first on Aura Real Estate Experts. Source:: AURA Real Estate Experts

14 June 2018 – Eje Prime Taylor Wimpey España is going to invest €95 million in seven of the developments that it has up for sale on the Costa del Sol. The property developer is strengthening its commitment to the Malagan coast after verifying that Brits, one of its main client cohorts, have doubled their investment in housing in Spain. “Demand is increasing in general”, explained the Director of Sales and Marketing at Taylor Wimpey España, Marc Pritchard. The executive also added that “although the Brexit effect caused Brits to buy less in 2017, the fear is disappearing”. Another important factor in the evolution of house purchases by Brits is the devaluation of the pound, which last year made investment in Spanish housing more expensive for buyers from the islands. Nevertheless, Spain is still the preferred destination for Brits looking to buy a home, something that is reiterated by the British Embassy in the country. Across the whole of Spain, there are around 300,000 British citizens and “they are still the main overseas buyers of homes, accounting for 15% of the total”, says Pritchard. In the ranking of foreign nationalities who buy homes in Spain, the Brits exceed the French, […]

14 June 2018 – Eje Prime Única Real-Estate is one step closer to its stock market debut. The Socimi is finalising the procedures to start trading on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) this month. The company owns 29 commercial premises in the Community of Madrid (25 in Madrid capital and four in other municipalities) with a combined net book value of €32.5 million and an annualised gross rental income of more than €1.9 million. The Socimi is committed to diversifying its portfolio to ensure that no single asset exceeds 15% of the total portfolio, and for a moderate financial leverage equivalent to less than 40% of the market value of the combined investment. Única, which defines itself as a long-term investor, was created in 2015 and financed its previous growth through capital increases. In September 2017, the real estate firm became a Socimi. The President of Única is Eduardo Paraja, who used to be the CEO of Metrovacesa and an external advisor to Habitat. Original story: Eje Prime Translation: Carmel Drake The post Madrid-Based Socimi Única Finalises its MAB Debut with c. 30 Commercial Premises appeared first on Aura Real Estate Experts. Source:: AURA Real Estate Experts

15 June 2018 – Eje Prime The Galician giant Inditex is continuing to divest some of its real estate assets and the main players in the sector are taking advantage to acquire retail premises on some of the country’s main high streets. Ores, the Socimi owned by Bankinter and the Portuguese firm Sonae, has purchased a package of four assets from the owner of Zara for €12.5 million. The establishments, which together span more than 1,930 m2 are currently leased to the female fashion chain Stradivarius. Ores Socimi has acquired one store measuring 700 m2 at number 28 Rúa de Urzaiz, in Vigo; another measuring 450 m2 at number 23 on Calle de los Fueros, in Vitoria; a third measuring 430 m2 at number 2 Calle Emilio Arriesta, in Pamplona; and a fourth measuring 350 m2 on the corner of Plaza del Olivar and Calle San Miquel, in Mallorca. “With this acquisition, financed by available cash held by Ores Socimi, the company is continuing to fulfil the investment objectives set out in its business plan and in accordance with the financial parameters committed to the shareholders”, explain sources at the group. The purchase of these stores, located on the main […]

14 June 2018 – Eje Prime Quabit Inmobiliaria is building homes in Guadalajara. This week, the property developer has handed over the keys to 116 social housing properties in Guadalajara, in the new Aguas Vivas development and at the same time, it has laid the first brick for the second phase of another 196 homes. According to the President and CEO of Quabit Inmobiliaria, Félix Abánades (pictured below, right), the company plans to build around 700 properties in this part of Guadalajara over the coming months. This development is the first new build social housing complex to have been completed in Guadalajara in the last decade, in the new Aguas Vivas development. After completing the first phase, and starting the earth movement works of the second phase, Quabit Inmobiliaria is now also on the verge of starting to market the third phase, which includes another 193 properties, according to Guadaque. Félix Abánades highlighted that it has taken ten years to start constructing new build homes from scratch again and he expressed his satisfaction that this work is being carried out in Guadalajara and that it is involving social housing units. Original story: Eje Prime Translation: Carmel Drake The post Quabit […]