Foreign capital takes real estate investment in Barcelona to 2 billion euros

• • Investment was up 43% from the previous year
• • 85% of investment in Barcelona is from foreign capital

Real estate investment operations in Barcelona in 2015 beat all previous investment records and hit the 2-billion-euro mark, breaking the previous pre-crisis record from 2007, according to a study compiled by real estate consultancy Aguirre Newman published recently, which also points to this trend continuing throughout 2016.

The study points out that the investment figures are up 43% from the previous year and highlights that the most important was investment in offices (885 million euros), followed by hotels (€347.5M), housing (€196.6M), land (€185.9M), retail (€163.5M), industrial and logistics space (€89.6M) and shopping centers (€40M). There was also an additional 70 million euros in real estate investment that can’t be classified in any of the previous categories.

Therefore, investment in offices was 52% higher than the previous year. REITs and foreign investors were the main players in the real estate market, with 82% of all transactions. Investment in industrial and logistics space was up43% from the previous year. And investment in hotels was up 25% from 2014.

Furthermore, the Aguirre Newman study highlights that 85% of investment in Barcelona came from foreign capital – 55% through funds and investors and 30% from REITs. In 2015, these foreign investors also participated in the land and residential market. This fact marked a changing trend, unlike previous years when investors stuck to the office, hotel and logistics markets.

In short, real estate investment in Barcelona closed 2015 with a total volume of 1.977 billion euros, which is 43 million euros more than the previous year, according to the Aguirre Newman report. This is practically 20% of the 10.79 billion euros invested in Spain as a whole in the real estate sector over this period of time.