More than three hundred managers and professionals attended the sixth edition of the Iberian REIT & Listed Conference, which has already established itself as one of the most important meetings for the real estate sector in Spain and Portugal. Once again, Iberian Property joined forces with EPRA to organise this conference, which took place the 6th of February in the distinguished Rosewood Villa Magna hotel in Madrid, counting with the support of Aedas Homes, BNP Paribas Real Estate, Clifford Chance, Colonial, Lar España, Merlin Properties, and Morais Leitão.
On a roundtable discussion with the theme "Cash returns - are real estate companies the best option?", José Ramón Iturriaga, Fund Manager of Abante Asesores, insisted that the market needs to start assessing both the fundamentals and the quality of the assets of listed real estate companies, which are trading at a steep discount to the value of their assets. «There are starting to be reasons to close the discount in the valuations of listed companies and the market will have to start looking at European listed companies and, in particular, Spanish ones. In some cases, they offer double-digit dividend yields on a recurring basis, which is nonsense».
The manager also insisted that there may still be adjustments in offices, where the cycle is behind that of shopping centres, but that the worst is over and that the stock market should start to anticipate this scenario, as it is already doing.
Iturriaga illustrated the case with a specific real estate investment fund he launched in the middle of last year, covering national and European listed companies, including around 10 Spanish SOCIMIs, which is already offering returns of 20%, a sign that «the market is starting to take notice and that, after the discounts, listed real estate is back on investors' radar».
"The impact of interest rates and storytellings of work from home or e-commerce are dissipating, making this a good time to invest in the listed real estate".