Barcelona Meeting Point INTERVIEW
JOAQUIN CASTELLVI,
HEAD OF SPANISH OPERATIONS DE STONEWEG SPAIN
STONEWEG SPAIN This year you have opened a new branch in Madrid, which adds to the one you already had in Barcelona. What are the next steps that Stoneweg will carry out to continue consolidating itself as one of the leading real estate platforms in Spain? Spain is a strong and growing economy, with very attractive financing conditions for this type of assets. The opening of both branches has been due to the large number of projects we have in the national territory: more than 30 developments totaling more than 1,300 homes, more than 200,000 m², as well as 3 office buildings of more than 33,000 m². All of them are investments with scheduled delivery dates between 2017 and 2020. We expect to close 2017 with 50 portfolio projects totaling 2,000 homes for sale. We have noticed during mostly the last year, you have been acquiring
land and rebuilding in fairly mature areas of Madrid and Barcelona, as well as in coastal destinations that are not typical. What is this strategy due to? We put great emphasis on strategies that ensure a sale or lease of the finished property in a maximum period of 2/3 years, creating a leverage over the local network to seek attractive opportunities out of the market and negotiating frameworks with the owners. For this, we develop our activity together with specialized partners in each of the local markets, detecting in them the best business opportunities. That is why we invest in urban areas that, due to their maturity, lack space for new buildings, but they do have an objective clientele and constitute an unexplored market, such as the Madrid neighborhood of Moncloa or L’Eixample in Barcelona. Similarly, we consider that the entire Spanish coast is attractive to the 55
potential buyer and that, more and more, people are looking for less crowded and quieter destinations, which means that there is a very prominent market niche to which we can turn. We have just witnessed how Amazon has recently rented one of its properties managed jointly with Grupo Castellví in the 22 @ district of Barcelona which has been a milestone because of the scale of the operation. Is the office sector your new “workhorse”? This strategy responds to the diversification of Stoneweg’s portfolio of real estate assets, capturing solar and different office buildings in geographical areas with great business development such as the 22 @ district of Barcelona. In this specific place we work side by side with Grupo Castellví to capture different promotional opportunities. In fact, we manage 3 properties of more than 33,000
