François-Xavier Lancel from INVERTICA offers us his vision of the spanish logistics real estate marketINVERTICA is specialised in the Iberian Peninsula territory.
The Spanish logistic sector has had to cope, as the rest of Europe, with a “turbulent” 2023 in terms of general economic slowdown, uncertainties in the main supply chain routes due to regional conflicts which negatively impacted the decision process of the main actors of the supply chain. As a result, we observed a reduction of the global take-up level compared to 2022 of about 25% to 30%, with approximately 2M sqm. Meanwhile, investment volumes have dropped more than 50%.
Higher interest rates and financing costs, along with higher construction costs, have slowed down the delivery of new speculative projects, enhancing BTS* projects.
Nevertheless, more than 6M sqm of new projects (both speculative and BTS) are due to come into the market in the following years, 60% of which are in the Central Area (Madrid, Toledo, Castilla la Mancha), and about 20% between Cataluña and Valencia.
This is supported by various factors like:
- Factories nearshoring trend seems to be here to stay
- The need of rejuvenation of the logistic parc due to new operational requirements and ESG factors
- A general increase in inventories, to reduce the Supply chain supply uncertainties
- A steady growth of E-commerce in the coming years
- An “above average” GDP growth in Spain (2,5% in 2023, and an expected 1,5% for 2024)
- A clearer future with respect to interest rates
The perception of the investors has clearly changed with respect to 2023, due to a clearer picture of the interest rates and various portfolios are being traded (mostly Core and Core + assets). This should result in a recovery of investment volumes and yield stabilization in the short run. About 300 M€ were traded in the first trimester, slightly over last years results on the same period, but with several ongoing selling processus that should boost investment volumes in Q2 and onwards.
INVERTICA IRELS is an independent Real Estate Consulting firm, client focused, and highly specialized on advising: end users, developers, investment funds and asset managers in their logistic requirements, or acquisition and disposal strategies in the Iberian Peninsula. Thanks to its experienced partners and Team (25 years average experience on the Spanish market), INVERTICA has advised in more than 3M sqm deals over the last 10 years, a great deal of it through "off market" operations.
To explore more : https://www.invertica.es/
*BTS : build to suit