Neither a pandemic nor a Ukrainian guerrilla. Real estate investment in Spain has had an unstoppable start to the year. The result is the first half with the oldest investment in history: almost 10,000 million, according to data published this Wednesday by CBRE, the former global real estate consultancy. This is 80% more than the same period last year (that is to say almost double) and almost 14% more than in the first half of 2015, the best in history to this day.
Investments of 9,870 million break down into 4,424.1 million in the first quarter and 5,445.5 million in the second quarter. The 1,987 million dollars of the operation by which BBVA bought 662 stores from the company Merlin Properties contribute to this figure. That is, more than part of the total investment (exactly 20.1%) was spent solely on this operation. With that, commerce (the anglicism used to describe commercial real estate in real estate gibberish) has focused the former part of investors’ attention: 2,918 million. A joy for a sector that has been attracting cash since the pandemic. As proof, the dates of this first semester are multiplied by those of the same period of 2021.
The residential sector (which includes homes but also other types of residential buildings) was the second most active sector with the oldest traction, after commercial real estate. It attracted 2,451 million investments, 71% more than between January and June last year. More than half of that money went to real estate, the ultimate goal of which is locating apartments. A chale share was allocated to student residences and almost as much to coliving (shared service buildings, similar to student residences but aimed at a different manifesto, for example, young foreign workers).
The investment cake was completed with 1,650 million in the hotel sector, 1,175 million in the industrial and logistics sector (which is experiencing a vigorous jolt due to the pandemic, but this time it has slowed down a bit and is subtly below the one year figures of yesterday). ) and 1,075 million office buildings. CBRE still includes another 600 million in the so-called “independent” sector, which includes health buildings and nursing homes, among others.
For Miriam Goicoechea, director of research at CBRE Spain, “the figures show that the real estate sector in Spain continues to be attractive for investors, even in a changing macroeconomic context”. Although the second half is generally more favorable for a comeback than the first (it has been so for seven of the last ten years), the skillful warns in certain statements to the media about “the existing volatility in the market”.
Without removal, this volatility has not prevented an all-time high in the advisor’s records, which dates back to 2011. Real estate investing (i.e. securing cash for real estate to create profitability) increased in Spain after the end of the Great Recession. This led to an unbeaten first half of 2015, still marred at the time by a major operation involving Merlin. Although then as a buyer, since he did it for nearly 1,800 million with Testa, a hereditary real estate company with thousands of apartments that, years later, would come under the control of the fund Blackstone.
If in addition the radar extends to the second half of the year, the period with which this year 2022 began remains in third place on the podium for real estate investments. It subtly exceeds the second half of 2018 (the year of all records, since total investments exceeded 20,000 million and between July and December more than 13,000 million were made) and even the second half (with 9,979 million investments). mid 2016.