Wall Street Mega-Landlord Blackstone Turns Screw On Spanish Regime & Belongings Market

From Wolf Street: 

A lot of coin is at stake.

Wall Street mega-landlord Blackstone is in ane trial once to a greater extent than making its presence felt inwards Spain, which represents almost one-fifth of its global belongings empire. During the Q&A session of a recent breakfast coming together organized yesteryear the American Chamber of Commerce, the senior advisor of the group’s Castilian subsidiary, Claudio Boada, confronted Spain’s Minister of Economy in addition to Business, Nadia Calviño, on the government’s plans to reform Spain’s renting laws inwards an endeavour to irksome downwards the stair of ascension rents.

Of item concern to the private equity colossus is the government’s stated finish of extending the minimum duration of rental contracts from 3 to v years for private individuals in addition to from 3 to 7 years for businesses, inwards the promise of tempering the charge per unit of measurement at which rents are ascension inwards the country. But it volition equally good hamper the powerfulness of private-equity landlords similar Blackstone to turf out the existing tenants of newly acquired properties equally apace equally possible inwards lodge to jack upwards rental prices for novel ones.

“We mean value that the measures existence discussed could halt upwards increasing the cost of rents cost in addition to reducing investment,” said Boada. Translation: if the regime proceeds alongside its misguided excogitation to brand life a fiddling easier for the legions of struggling tenants, private equity landlords similar Blackstone powerfulness hold upwards tempted to cut back its investment inwards Castilian existent estate.

Given that private equity firms are ane of the biggest sources of need for existent estate inwards Espana equally good equally the chief buyers of impaired existent estate assets from Castilian banks in addition to Spain’s bad bank, Sareb, it’s a pretty large threat — in addition to ane the regime volition no dubiety accept rattling seriously.

Blackstone lone has over 100,000 existent estate assets inwards Spain that are controlled via dozens of companies. Those assets include a huge portfolio of impaired existent estate assets, including defaulted mortgages in addition to existent estate-owned assets (REOs).

The fellowship is non entirely the biggest private real-estate director inwards Spain; it is equally good the biggest hotel owner, afterwards acquiring the country’s largest existent estate investment trust (REIT), Hispania, for €1.9 billion, before this year. Following a string of smaller operations, the acquisition of Hispania cemented Blackstone’s rank equally tiptop domestic dog inwards ane of the world’s biggest tourist markets, alongside a full stock of 17,000 beds, far ahead of Meliá (almost 11,000), H10 (more than 10,000) in addition to Hoteles Globales (just over 9,000)....

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