“Portugal is firmly established on the radar of foreign investors”, states Luís Rocha Antunes, partner and director of investment at Cushman & Wakefield. With “a volume of approximately 900 million euros during the first semester and a transaction volume of more than 1 billion euros forecast for the second semester, we expect to attain the same result as last year or higher”, which was around 2 billion euros.
Stressing that “investors continue to show great interest in the national property market”, according to the calculations of Nuno Nunes, who leads the investment department at CBRE, more than 1.048 billion euros were invested in the first semester, 90% of which in retail and office assets. And, “considering the sale processes currently at market, as well as a set of others due to begin negotiation, it is reasonable to assume that 2016 will reach a total investment volume between 1.8 and 2.1 billion euros”, he predicts.
These estimates regard the volume invested in commercial real estate assets, in other words, they include several asset classes such as retail, offices, hotels and logistics, but exclude investments carried out for regeneration or residential purposes – which, we must note, have been responsible for attracting large volumes of investment to our country in recent years (see box).
Portfolio sales boost the beginning of the year
At a time when offices run side by side with retail as the most active asset classes traded, Fernando Ferreira highlights the strong interest generated by portfolios in the 1st semester, “namely the sale of two Sonae hypermarket portfolios and the sale of Campus da Justiça”. Concerning the typologies of the operations, “Sale & Leaseback prevails, a result that is highly influenced by this type of sale involving the hypermarket portfolios mentioned previously”, adds the JLL head of Capital Markets.