Moonlake Capital promotes a 1,200 million real estate megaproject in Malaga
The investment group Moonlake Capital gives a boost to the mega urban development in Malaga that projects the construction of 5,000 homes and a business and logistics park, through an alliance with the Spanish firm CAI Soluciones de Ingeniería - Engineering.
The project, to which a total investment of about 1,200 million euros will be allocated, stands on one of the few large-area soils on the Costa del Sol. CAI's involvement in this operation will be linked to infrastructure development and urbanization of the field, as explained by the company to elEconomista.
'If everything evolves as planned, the first homes could start construction in late 2023 or early 2024,' explains Armin Ghorbanifar, CEO and founder of Moonlake.
The manager also assures that he is in negotiations with two institutional funds that want to enter the residential part, 'we would continue to be linked to the project with management,' he points out. Most of the 5,000 homes could be used for rental. Thus they would be sold in bulk through build to rent operations. Although, that will ultimately depend on the partner who manages to access the operation.
This new rental housing formula has been implanted strongly in Spain for two years, especially in cities like Madrid, where the demand for rental apartments is higher than the supply. Little by little, the interest of investors to acquire entire blocks of flats for rent is spreading to other areas of Spain, such as Pamplona or Malaga. Only last year, build to rent operations were closed in our country for a volume of 1.5 billion.
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The project, located in the Andalusian Technology Park area, in Malaga, has a total area of 2.6 million square meters. In addition to the homes, these lands have 195,000 m2 of buildable roof for business use, 112,000 m2 of industrial, 30,000 m2 of commercial, and two large general systems. According to the company, currently four of these sectors are pending the approval of their partial plans. 'There is interest on the part of the City Council in this going ahead,' says Ghorbanifar.
For the logistics part, the strategy also involves seeking institutional partners. 'In this case we believe that the best thing will be to develop phase by phase, but there are already different funds analyzing the operation,' says the manager.
Although Moonlake Capital is the driving force behind this development and is part of the Compensation Board, the land is owned by almost 700 families, 'who did not have the necessary resources to carry out this great project,' said the manager.
Moonlake Capital was born in late 2016 as a commercial and residential Real Estate boutique powered by Ghorbanifar, along with British property tycoon Desmond Bloom, Narish Rajwani, a former banker at Safra Bank and Bankinter, and a group of Private Capital and Family Offices of Spain, UK and USA.
Ghorbanifar's first steps in the Spanish real estate business were in the luxury residential market in Spain, dedicating his activity mainly to trophy assets and bank financial loans. Currently, the main focus of the company's activity is in Spain within the residential and logistics market. In this last area, it has important developments in Seville, Malaga and Valencia.
Likewise, they are also focused on the rehabilitation of residential and tertiary buildings, and on the development of land under management, making them finalist land. On the other hand, they bet on value added operations, managing the replacement, capex or change of use of buildings adding value and medium risk.