International investors have been the most active, bringing in more than 1,000 million euros of the total, which has been the same at national level. This circumstance contrasts markedly with last year, when the leading investors were national.
In accordance with information from CBRE, the sector in Cataluña will end the year by beating the 2015 total of 1,555 million euros. Indeed, demand remains high, in spite of the fact that product supply is much reduced due to the activity of the last few years.
At the same time, as a consequence of this imbalance between supply and demand, prices have increased from last year, not only in prime assets, but also in secondary zones, which causes investors to study operations more closely. All the sectors are arousing interest and the prime assets are reaching maximum levels.
Greater retail activity
The most active sector has been retail, which took 41% of investment (537 million), also having been the segment which has most grown compared to last year. The sale of the shopping centre Diagonal Mar, facilitated by CBRE, for 493 million was without doubt a determining factor.
In second place is the office sector with 292 million, even though this total shows a 62% drop compared to the first months of 2015. Among the main transactions, can be highlighted the sale of one of the main centres for Nestlé to Meridia Capital in the first trimester. In spite of this, for CBRE, the demand for new space has been very positive during the last nine months, with rent increases in all the Barcelona submarkets.
As for hotels, this sector has concentrated 13% of real estate investment in Cataluña, 170 million, thanks to transactions such as the sale of the Pullman Skipper Hotel in Barcelona.
The industrial and logistics sector made 71 million to September, more than double the amount in 2015.
According to Anna Esteban, Director of CBRE Barcelona, “the real estate sector in Cataluña in general and Barcelona in particular, have remained an important activity. In this way, investors stay confident, which will allow us to close 2016 with a larger investment sum than the previous year”.
Photo: Barcelona Home