Spanish bonds rose, pushing the 10-year yield to the lowest in four months, after the government’s sale of debt benefited from a resurgent appetite for riskier assets in Europe’s financial markets.

An extensive summary of Spain's current tax regime.

Transactions in the European hotel sector have seen a big increase with volume reaching €12bn in the year to date, according to Charles Human, HVS managing director, speaking yesterday [29 September 2015] at the Hotel Investment Conference Europe at London’s Jumeirah Carlton Tower.
 
Introducing a session on private equity, Human painted a positive outlook of today’s hotel investment sector, outlining the fact there had been a 58% year-on-year volume increase.

Lone Star Funds first offered to buy London property developer Quintain Estates & Development for a 22 percent premium. With investors competing for real estate assets across Europe, hedge fund Elliott Associates was able to sway the private-equity firm to raise its bid.

Real estate investment activity in Europe is primarily concentrated in the three main markets of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and those three countries accounted for a whopping 67.5 percent of European Q2 2015 transaction volume, according to Real Capital Analytics. But markets are not always the same and do not always offer the best opportunities; like the Grand Old Duke of York, they are not always up and they are not always down.

The signs of recovery for the Spanish commercial real estate market is apparent as commercial real estate investors reportedly now views Spain as the top investment target in Europe for next year.

Spanish mortgage lending rose the most in 11 months in July as competition between lenders helped curb borrowing costs.

A Corestate Capital joint venture is to develop a multi-use tower with an investment volume of €240 million next to Cuatro Torres, the medical and financial hub of Madrid.

The deal marks the first investment for the joint venture, Iberian Corestate Capital Advisors, which was established in February between the Zug-based private equity real estate firm and Madrid-based asset management firm Inmobiliaria Espacio and its sister company OHL Desarrollos, a property development company.

The development site in Madrid measures 721,000 square feet and allows for a footprint of 361,000 square feet. Around 560,000 square feet of this space shall be devoted to public use, set as a condition by the authorities of Madrid. The particular use, for instance in the context of a hospital, university or administration is presently being evaluated. 

It knows where you live. It knows what car you drive. It knows who you’re meeting with today and how much sugar you take in your coffee. (At least it will, after the next software update.) This is the Edge, and it’s quite possibly the smartest office space ever constructed.

A day at the Edge in Amsterdam starts with a smartphone app developed with the building’s main tenant, consulting firm Deloitte. From the minute you wake up, you’re connected. The app checks your schedule, and the building recognizes your car when you arrive and directs you to a parking spot.

Corestate Capital is developing a multi-use tower in Madrid.

The Switzerland-based investment manager said it was investing in the Cuatro Torres scheme.

The company’s Iberian Corestate Capital division, a joint venture with Madrid developer Promociones Y Propiedades Inmobiliarias Espacio, will manage the asset’s development and leasing.

Active investors see Spain as the top investment target in Europe, with Germany following close behind in 2015.

Recent European poll showed 27% of over 150 investors identified Spain as their preferred investment target for next year, clearly indicating the strength of its recent recovery with values still well below their previous peak. 

Humphrey White, Head of Capital Markets at Knight Frank Spain, comments "The fundamental rationale behind investing in Spain is even stronger than this time last year. Prime CBD office rents have risen by 20% over the past 12 months, but remain nearly 40% below the 2008 peak, and both footfall and sales have been increasing in dominant shopping centres for six consecutive quarters."

The United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain are the main European markets in the purchase and sale of non-strategic banking assets during the first half of the year. 

In Spain transactions equivalent to 6 billion euros were completed in the first six months of 2015.

For Miriam Broncano, it was just a great time to buy the three-bedroom apartment she had her eye on in Madrid’s university quarter.

The human resources executive and her partner took out a 30-year variable rate loan set at Euribor plus one percentage point last month with Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA. Spain’s second-largest lender gave her a 300,000-euro ($340,000) loan, which was equivalent to about 90 percent of the price the couple paid for the property after the bank valued it a 100,000 euros more than its sale price, she said.

“The spread is unbeatable and the conditions the bank offered us would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago,” said Broncano, 40. “The banks are really jostling with each other to woo clients.”

Spain is expected to be one of the best performing markets in Europe over the next five years. Led by last year’s yield compression, the upturn is set to be sustained by a rebound in prime rent, which importantly has now started to materialise in Madrid and Barcelona, Deutsche AWM analysts commented.

Mario Draghi’s quantitative-easing program has a new set of supporters: real estate buyers.

Commercial property purchases in the euro area surged 32 percent in the year through June, according to London-based broker Knight Frank LLP, with investment transactions totaling 104.2 billion euros ($117.5 billion). Deals tripled in Portugal and more than doubled in Spain.

When Frank Da Silva moved into former athletes’ accommodation on the site of London’s 2012 Olympic Games, he became one of hundreds of thousands of people across Europe who are joining the continent’s biggest property trend: renting.

European real estate asset manager AXA Real Estate has bought a property in Valencia, Spain for the development of a new hospital, PERE sister publication Private Healthcare Investor has reported. 

AXA made the investment on behalf of a large US pension fund and US-based real estate investment trust Medical Properties Trust. 

The joint venture made a pre-let agreement with Spanish hospital operator IMED Hospitales, which will operate out of the new facility. The new building will have 27,000 square metres of floor space with 250 private patient rooms, along with 15 intensive care units, 87 outpatient surgeries and 15 operating theaters.

It is clear that the 2009 regulation on SOCIMIs (and in particular the December 2012 amendment) came at the right time and is well adapted to the requirements of investors. We are now starting to see the results. Activity in the investment market in the last eighteen months has been very high and SOCIMIs have played the leading role. What are the reasons for such success?

Economic uncertainty and worries over policymaking in China have swung dramatically into focus for foreign investors. But they have been on the radar of wealthy Chinese based on the mainland for some time.

According to the China team at FT Confidential, an investment research service at the Financial Times, almost half of high net worth individuals on mainland China have earmarked more than 30 per cent of their assets for overseas investment. Almost 61 per cent of those surveyed said they planned to increase their overseas holdings in the next two years. Significantly, wealthy Chinese are not motivated by chasing higher returns when they park their savings abroad. Most respondents expected a return of a maximum of 5 per cent on their investments.Instead, they are chasing safe havens, such as property and insurance schemes, cited as the top two destinations for cash.

High dividend income relative to low yields in fixed income markets and recovering asset prices have drawn strong investment capital flows into Europe’s listed real estate companies. The value of IPOs raised last year saw real estate punching significantly above its weight relative to other industry equities sectors and 2015 is likely to record further robust inflows.