Barcelona has positioned itself as the fifth European capital that attracted the most non-EU investment in the first half of the year, according to data from the consulting firm CBRE. In total, the Catalan capital raised 882.9 million euros, only behind London, Berlin, Manchester and Munich. International investment in Europe has reached 13.7 billion euros, 68% less than in the same period in 2022.
Xavier Güell, director of the consulting firm in Barcelona, ??explained that investors continue to come to the city because of the “good fundamentals”, that is, the good profitability that properties offer to buyers and the expectation that they will rise in price. For this reason, global real estate investment in the city in the semester, of 1,143 million euros, “has fallen by 34% compared to the same period in 2022, a decrease much lower than the European average, where the main capitals suffer reductions of between 40% and 70%,” said Güell.
The non-EU capital invested in the European brick in the first half has come mainly from North America, with 9.4 billion euros, followed by the Asia-Pacific region, with 3.2 billion euros, and the Middle East, with 990 million.
This semester Europe has received the lowest international investment since 2010, despite the fact that the fall of the euro against the dollar makes the continent more attractive for buyers from other countries. Worldwide, Europe usually captures 75% of cross-border investment and this year it was only 48%, a drop that CBRE attributes to the restriction of debt markets, which makes it difficult to finance purchases, and to the uncertainty about prices, which have been falling for several months. Thus, the firm estimates that in Spain, compared to last year, logistics warehouses have reduced their price by 12.2%, offices by 7.8% and shopping centers by 7.4%, while residential properties They have only dropped 0.95%.
According to Güell, “two thirds” of the price adjustment has already been carried out and these will stabilize in the coming months “and investment activity will already accelerate.” In the meantime, however, investors who bought properties between 2018 and 2022 “obtained a negative return over a five-year horizon,” since rental income will not cover the drop in valuations.
European investors, for their part, have also reduced their purchases outside Europe, and have concentrated them in the United States, which attracted investments of 1,680 million euros, of the total of 1,900 million they invested outside the continent.
