MADRID: A grand yellow-brick edifice in Madrid’s poshest shopping district, the ABC Serrano mall, is a Spanish symbol of tradition and elegance. Only it isn’t Spanish anymore.
Like shops, offices, and apartments across Spain, it has been snapped up by foreign buyers, who are streaming back a year after economists were warning the country faced ruin.
“Since this summer there has been investment fever in Spain,” said Jose Luis Ruiz, an independent real estate consultant.
“There are dozens of investment funds from all the major countries, such as Americans, Germans and British, who are focussing on Spain.”
Topped by a cupola and overlaid with blue tiles, ABC Serrano was formerly home to ABC, a leading conservative newspaper.
“It had become obsolete over the years but it still benefits from its unique location,” said Thierry Julienne, chairman of IBA Capital Partners, the international investment group that bought the building.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for us to recreate a first-rate landmark in the socio-economic fabric of central Madrid,” hesaid.
Los Angeles-based real estate giant CBRE said in a report that investment in Spanish real estate has returned to the levels it reached before the crisis of 2008, when a decade-long building boom went bust.
Such investment doubled in 2013 to ¤4bn ($5.5bn) thanks to international investors, it said.
Mikel Marco-Gardoqui, CBRE’s director of cross-border investment in Spain, said the surge was driven largely by investment funds from the United States, Britain and France, plus rich private investors from Latin America.
“Lots of investors, mostly international ones, are coming back to the market, and that is driving a slight recovery in prices,” he said.
“There is lots of floor space available, the prices are starting to rise, profitability has improved, so they are coming back to the market very actively.”
In the residential sector, Ruiz said, “there are loads of foreigners — French, Belgians, Dutch, British, Germans and lately Russians — who want to have a house here for their retirement, or as a second residence.”
House prices rose by 0.7 percent overall in Spain in the third quarter of this year, the National Statistics Institute said — the first rise since 2010.
The figure was hailed as a further sign of recovery after news that Spain timidly emerged from recession in the third quarter of this year.
But professionals remained cautious, even if prices are starting to rise in coveted spots such as the sunny coasts. Spain’s banks, which were bailed out last year with ¤41bn ($56bn) of international rescue funds, still have piles of cheap properties left over from the building boom, which have lost much of their value.
AFP
