Not logistics, not hotels and not offices — large international investors have set their sights on new, "alternative" assets.
According to the annual report on trends in the Spanish real estate market, conducted by the consulting company PwC and the Urban Land Institute (ULI), in 2023 investment funds, real estate companies and banks, as well as other major players, are now betting on energy infrastructure, healthcare assets and data centers. These three types of assets in the real estate market have the best prospects for development, growth potential and attracting new investors.
Such a shift in priorities is quite obvious, given the very recent situation with record high energy prices, Europe's transition to new types of energy resources and the change of global suppliers. Big changes are taking place in the energy sector of the EU economy and many investors now see a good opportunity to "ride the wave". In addition, it is not known what will happen by the winter of 2024. Now prices have fallen, in six months they will rise again, and resources will not be enough.
At the same time, healthcare-related facilities, as well as data centers, have remained in a growth phase since the beginning of COVID-19. They have a high yield potential, plus in Spain these segments of the real estate market are poorly developed and there is a lot of space to capture the most tidbits of the sector.
After this triad of assets, residential facilities for the elderly are located, given the accelerating aging of Europe, as well as student and social housing is growing. These markets are also not yet mastered, fragmented and have great potential for growth.
But logistics, on the contrary, is losing weight and falling in the global attractiveness rating, which is a consequence of both the deteriorating state of the global economy and the curtailment of globalization processes in the world. More and more countries are beginning to concentrate on the domestic market and engage in protectionism. The pandemic and the subsequent international crisis related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine became the trigger for launching the process of disintegration of the globalized economy.
The office sector can reach new heights if it focuses on environmental friendliness and technology. But real estate in the retail sector continues to lose popularity, becoming more and more inferior to online commerce. Only retail parks can hope for "light at the end of the tunnel".
As for hotels, the study notes that forecasts point to two completely different situations simultaneously existing in the sector. On the one hand, business travel is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, it remains to be seen how this will affect vacation trips, which have greatly increased since the end of pandemic restrictions. It is quite possible that the next few years will demonstrate that this recovery growth was only a short-term surge of enthusiasm accumulated during periods of isolation.