Amidst the current positivity surrounding the residential Spanish property market over recent weeks, the commercial property sector in Spain may also be on the brink of an upturn.
Findings put together by Frank Knight, the London estate agency and commercial property consultancy, revealed that in H1 of 2013 there were many encouraging signs that signalled commercial property in Spain was firmly on the radar of investors.
In the Spanish capital of Madrid, an abrupt increase in the purchase of office space saw the total amount of office space now occupied in the city increase to 197,000 sq. m. in the first half of the year – that’s a 60 per cent increase on the same period last year.
It’s thought that this helping hand from the private sector will help the government as they strive to redeem the value of properties, as well as providing a worthy cash injection into the market.
There have been big players in the field of business snapping up some of these commercial properties too, which can only help encourage similar sized companies to do the same.
Perhaps the most significant purchase of office space was completed by Vodafone; the mobile telecommunications giant took over 50,000 sq. m. worth of space with its new headquarters on Avenida de America, Madrid.
Elsewhere, insurance group AXA agreed a deal to buy a range of offices in Barcelona for a sum of €172 million in the company’s first Spanish property transaction since 2008.
Meanwhile, within the last 24 hours, Hard Rock International – proprietor of the Hard Rock Cafes and Hard Rock Hotels – has announced it’s to open its first European hotel in Ibiza, the Balearic Islands.
In a partnership with the Palladium Hotel Group, the Hard Rock Hotel intends to redesign a handful of existing hotels and transform them into one hotel complex of more than 480 rooms and is expected to open in late spring of 2014.
This flurry of activity helping foreign investment find its way back to Spain has given further hope that banks, which have previously been stringent with their lending, will now feel more at ease doing so having witnessed such investors enter the field of play.