Today, Europe is experiencing a difficult economic situation caused by such factors as inflation, fuel shortages and rising fuel prices, declining incomes, rising interest rates on lending — the list is long. But despite this, one of the European countries, Spain, broke its own historical record in attracting real estate investment. And we are talking about a wide variety of real estate: residential and office, industrial and logistics.
Thus, in the first half of 2022, more than €9.8 billion were invested in the local market, which is 80% more than in the first half of 2021. It is also an absolute record in the history of CBRE, which is engaged in consulting and providing services in the real estate sector, and its Spanish branch regularly provides detailed information on economic activity in the Spanish market.
In this context, it is worth paying attention to the hotel sector in Spain, which has attracted a large share of funds from the amount reported by CBRE. Specifically, in terms of the volume of funds invested in the first half of 2022, the hotel segment of the real estate market ranked third in the volume of attracted investments, second only to retail and the residential sector. In total, hotel real estate attracted €1.65 billion, which was the largest amount for the sector over the past 5 years.
Miriam Goicoechea, Head of Research at CBRE Spain, points out: "Investment volumes in the first half of the year demonstrate that the Spanish real estate market continues to be attractive to investors — even in a changing macroeconomic context. However, the volatility of the market will force us to closely monitor the dynamics of investment in the second half of the year."
As mentioned earlier, the retail sector is the first in the rating of the most popular real estate sectors for investors. Retail trade, especially related to tourism, became the main focus of interest in the first half of the year. In total, more than €2.9 billion were raised, which is 8 times more than the results of 2021 for the same period.
Miriam Goikoechea adds: "Retail real estate is the segment that grew the most in the first half of 2022, helped by BBVA's purchase of more than 630 properties from Merlin for €1.98 billion. This single transaction accounted for 70% of the total retail investment."