IP03

48 // iberian.propery / 2017

dossier// ISSUE: TOP IBERIAN cities

Investors will increasingly have to perceive the

city of Lisbon as a whole, no longer confining

themselves to the centre. Particularly in the

residential market, attention is highly focused

on certain riverfront zones and specific historic

districts, forgetting that Lisbon is a very small city,

but that still has areas with great development

potential and extremely interesting opportunities.

One need only look at the entire hillside of the

city’s eastern zone, located one kmor less from

the Tagus River, which begins in Expo, passing

through Braço de Prata andVale de SantoAntó-

nio, and we see the extensive terrain offering

good conditions for development. But this is not

the only case. There are similar examples in other

parts of the city, such as Ajuda, Lumiar, Olivais

and Encarnação, among others.

In other words, it is important to look at this ter-

ritory as awhole, expanding focus to a radius 1.5

or 2 km around the nucleus where investment

is currently concentrated (the historic centre)

and, yes, consider the Lisbonmunicipality as the

centre of a great city that has 2.8million residents

(considering the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon).

Fernando Santos

Montepio Real

Estate Asset

Management

Administrator

Lisbon has become, over the past years, target

of significant foreign investment in all areas of

the real estate sector.

The focus was originally established in devel-

oped property for commercial use – offices,

retail, warehousing – but most recently the

development activity, led by direct foreign in-

vestment, picked up strongly in areas such as

residential and hotels.

The booming tourism sector has added to the

momentum a strong demand for use of resi-

dential and touristic properties.

All things considered Lisbon is today a hot

market but, beneath the surface, still full of

opportunities.

One has only to tour around the city to realize

that, despite the touristic use, there is still a lot

to do in different areas such as the residential

leasing market, recovery of street retail, parking

facilities, amongst other.

In parallel, the office rental market, that has been

stagnant in terms of value, may be on a turning

point with unemployment rate now dropping

below9%, creating the need for additional areas.

Also only recently there has been movement

in the development of commercial property,

a fact that may contribute for the recovery of

rental values.

The competition is nowfierce on traditional invest-

ment in prime locations but still capable of pro-

ducing appealing returns in non-obvious locations.

The insight to these opportunities lies in the local

know-how of these fast changing conditions

and the ability to explore innovative hands-on

approaches to turn around solutions.

Frederico

Andrade e Sousa

Widerproperty

Administrator

«Investors will

increasingly have to

perceive the city of

Lisbon as a whole,

no longer confining

themselves to

the centre»