Independent sales transactions data on the Spanish commercial property investment market

Atasa, the Professional Association of Valuation Companies in Spain, has released details of a Code of Measurement Practice which aims to meet the longstanding need for the homogenization of the measurement of floor areas”.

The code was made public in a presentation made on 15th September. Announcements were made by José Antonio López Torralba, Chairman of the Technical and Statistical Commission of Atasa, charged with editing the Standard; Gustavo Saiz, Chairman of Institutional Relations for the Commission; and Leandro Escobar, Managing Director of Atasa.

According to López Torralba, the Code of Measurement Practice “has emerged from the profound theoretical knowledge, wide practical experience and a long and continued effort by numerous technicians from many companies to synthesize a code coordinated through Atasa”.

The Code, “is intended to be a living document, and therefore, Atasa is already working on an extension for the correct application of the Code for distinct property types”, stated López Torralba.

For his part, Gustavo Saiz has emphasised the usefulness of the Standard for all agents which form part of the property markets in one form or other. Saiz also referred to the possibility of the Code being exported to other countries, since Tegova (The European Group of Valuation Associations) has adopted it as the basis for the elaboration of a European standard.

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Banco Santander cites generally illiquid and depressed state of Spanish investment property market as motive to postpone sale of Banif Property Investment Fund assets.

The “lack of any reasonable offers” for properties within the Banif Property Investment Fund, managed by Banco Santander, has led to Santander Real Estate postponing the sale of further assets in the fund.

In a communication to Spain’s stock market regulator (CNMV) Banif Inmobiliario explained that the fund will postpone the sale of its real estate assets until 2011 whereas previously it had said that sales would be undertaken in the second half of 2010. The reasons for the delay stated by the fund are the illiquid and generalized depressed state of the Spanish property market. The company’s fund managers have asserted that it considers that the offers received for a high number of its assets are not sufficient to justify going ahead with sales.

The real motive for delaying the sales may be because the fund is hopeful about the expected advantages which will follow legal modifications by the Government for the liquidation of property investment funds. The Government is making changes to the law which will allow the manager of a fund undergoing liquidation to sell the assets without any time limit. This situation has lead those responsible for the Banif fund, the largest property investment fund in Spain, with a portfolio worth €2.6bn and 43,400 shareholders, to reject offers received for its assets which it believes are not in the interest of its shareholders. Many of the assets comprise residential apartment buildings.

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