‘Brexit is an opportunity for Barcelona and Madrid, but we need to be humble and lower our expectations’, said Ismael Clemente, CEO of Merlin Properties. He was speaking at the 18th Annual Conference of the ESADE Alumni Real Estate Club, held in collaboration with Anticipa Real State. To this end, he noted, ‘Dreams of attracting front office are very tough, since those operations are more likely to go to Portugal, where taxes are lower’. ‘There may be 5% penetration in Spain, but cities like Paris or Frankfurt will win’, he added. 

Both Clemente and Pere Viñolas, CEO of Inmobiliaria Colonial, who also participated in the conference, highlighted that ‘there is clear market specialisation and very little overlap between Barcelona and Madrid’. Thus, they pointed out, whilst hedge funds prefer Barcelona, multinationals, such as insurance companies, might be seeking more square metres of office space and find Madrid to be a better fit. In contrast, the biotech industry clearly leans more towards Barcelona. In this regard, touching on current events, they noted that ‘Barcelona has everything it needs to win the bid for the European Medicines Agency’.

In his talk, Jordi Fabregat, an associate professor in the Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting at ESADE, said, ‘Last year, foreign investment closed at 17%; this year it’s approaching 20%.’ ‘We will no doubt end the year at half a million home sales’, he stressed. Similarly, in the discussion moderated by Eduard Mendiluce, president of the ESADE Alumni Real Estate Club and CEO of Anticipa, the CEOs of Merlin Properties and Inmobiliaria Colonial pointed out that ‘there have been movements of capital from the US to Europe, especially from hedge funds, which may indicate that Europe’s economic outlook is improving’. ‘France, which is one of the major drivers, is opening up again’, Clemente said. Viñolas noted, ‘Germany is also doing well.’

Adapting to new technologies

This year’s edition of the ESADE Alumni Real Estate Club’s Annual Conference placed special emphasis on digitalization in the real estate sector through a talk by Andy Tennant, Executive Director, EMEA Digital & Technology, at CBRE. According to Tennant, ‘Some 44% of jobs in the industry could be automated right now.’ He went on to stress the importance of adopting new technologies, such as drones, ‘which add value in the industry’, or 3D printing, which, he noted, can be used to build houses ‘for as little as $10,000’. According to Tennant, other technological developments directly affecting the sector include big data and online transactions. He cited the example of OpenRent, a website that lets homes in London for just £49. ‘The barriers to enter the sector are much lower today. We thus need to think about adopting technology the real estate sector has eschewed in the past, about who can operate this technology, and about the data we have that set us apart from the rest’, he concluded.