M&G has made a move in the Spanish residential sector and has entered Bilbao's new fashionable neighbourhood with the purchase of a rental project from Urbas.
This is Isla Zorrozaurre, known as the new Manhattan of Bilbao, as it is the most important area of urban development and urban regeneration in the city in recent years.
Specifically, the management company has signed a sale and purchase agreement with Urbas whereby the listed company has agreed to develop 314 turnkey homes, 407 parking spaces and 314 storage rooms divided into two towers of 15 and 17 floors, which will be transferred to the fund once completed. The transaction has been sealed for 97.8 million euros.
"The forward funding agreement has been executed on behalf of the M&G European Living Property fund," explains the firm. This strategy was launched last January to offer "attractive, risk-adjusted returns to institutional investors". The fund invests primarily in single and multi-family homes, student residences and senior housing in some of Europe's best residential markets.
The complex acquired from Urbas will offer high quality 1, 2 and 3-bedroom homes ready for occupancy in the second half of 2026. All the homes will have views of the estuary and will have communal facilities with gardens and children's play areas, a txoko, gym area, private storage room and car and bicycle parking. In addition, the complex will have a commercial area of 360 square metres.
The development aspires to obtain the A energy efficiency label and BREEAM certification with a Very good rating or better.
Zorrotzaurre is the largest urban regeneration project in Bilbao and a clear example of a reconversion initiative that will transform a former industrial area into a new green and well communicated neighbourhood that combines residential, office, leisure, cultural and academic facilities.
Designed by Zaha Hadid, the Pritzker Prize winning architect, Zorrotzaurre is an integral and sustainable Master Plan with affordable housing, areas for the development of non-polluting businesses, electric trams and the transformation of a peninsula into a new island protected from flooding.
Urbas is developing more than 850 homes here in addition to the more than 4,300 homes that currently make up its residential portfolio, with a 45% weighting in build-to-rent (BTR).
"We are very pleased with this transaction, which represents a corporate milestone and confirms the attractiveness of our projects and their profitability potential. We are also pleased with the positioning of Bilbao as an investment destination due to its economic dynamism, competitiveness and consolidation of its real estate market", explains Juan Antonio Acedo, Chairman and CEO of Urbas, who assures that "the rental market is starting to catch up with other much more mature markets, such as the German or Anglo-Saxon markets, and in our country it has a very long way to go with institutional investors and funds that have put Spain on their radar".
