Reaction from the market toward a new program created
The holiday break has left its mark on the Madrid market investment because during the summer months as there was only one operation. Metroinvest, a company owned by the Metropolis Group acquired one of the buildings in the area Acciona Julián Camarillo for 45 million euros. This contrasts with the high volume of investment that has seen Barcelona during this quarter compared with the activity completely void of the same period last year. The dynamism of the figures is mainly due to the operation of Deka Immobilien, Realia who bought the office building located at Avenida Diagonal 640 by 145 million euros, the largest investment transaction carried out in Barcelona in recent years.
The investor interest continues to focus on the prime and its adjacent shaft, but the market upturn that has brought the start of the new course extends reach to decentralized areas. Thus, demand in prime locations within and outside the M-30 has slowed the growth of profitability: the CBD is maintained between 5.25% and 5.50% and prime areas away from the center between 6.25% and 6.50%. Yields in Barcelona reaches a height slightly higher with 5.75% and 6.75% CBD improvements in areas of new business areas.
Rents in Madrid continue the trend of recent quarters with very moderate declines, which is fostering the growth of capital values. While in Barcelona continued stability of the income of the last three quarters and we expect this trend to continue until the end of the year.
The unemployment rate in the global market continues to escalate. The 1.5 million square feet available now account for 12% of the Madrid office park. But the behavior of strongly bound sub-markets evolve in the opposite direction. So Axis Castellana between Cibeles and Nuevos Ministerios, which in June stood at 5%, has dropped to 4.30%. Among new users of the area is the Bank of China, advised by Savills operation, which will share with headquarters in Paseo de Recoletos Uralita 3. The vacancy rate is already above Barcelona 12.5%, with nearly 700,000 square feet of free office. This increase affects all areas, although new business areas are more affected by the delivery of new projects. However, we anticipate that this rate will begin to stabilize later this year thanks to the virtual absence of projects in the period 2011-2012.