Investment funds in Spain step up bets on major property deals in 2026

Public information on how property ownership is distributed in Spain is still inadequate, especially when it comes to property held by large-scale landlords, defined as owners or companies with more than 10 homes or 1,500 m² of residential floorspace. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The data on the actual share of housing, held by the national land registry, anonymise the identity of owners. In areas such as the rental market, which falls under the remit of the autonomous communities, these figures can be obtained by filing transparency requests to analyse tenants' security deposits. This means many types of housing (owner-occupied homes, empty properties, tourist apartments...) are left out of the analysis. As a result, it is impossible to know exactly who owns these properties in real time. Tracking property transactions so far in 2026 – those that companies themselves have publicised – does make it possible to see who is most active in the Iberian market. But that does not mean they have overtaken, in number of properties, the traditional players who have shaped the landscape over the past decade: names already familiar in major cities such as Blackstone, CBRE IM, Renta Corporación, Cerberus, Ares Management or Santander and CaixaBank. New investments (even on public land) Fidere, a group of SOCIMI real estate investment trusts specialising in buying public and rental housing, has carried out the largest deal so far this year, worth 1.05 billion euros. Canadian group Brookfield bought it from Blackstone, thereby indirectly acquiring its portfolio of 47 buildings and more than 5,000 rental homes, in a transaction completed in March. In May, Azora agreed to buy from Patrizia 1,200 rental homes in the Barcelona metropolitan area (one of the most overheated housing markets in Spain, with extremely high population density in places such as L'Hospitalet de Llobregat) for more than 350 million euros. Patrizia had itself purchased them from BeCorp in 2022 for around 600 million. Many other deals have been signed even before the homes are finished: Barings will buy from Aurora Homes 305 affordable homes in Los Cerros (Vicálvaro) for more than 70 million euros, with delivery in 2029, and another 188 in Valdebebas for more than 56 million from Grupo Ferrocarril. Regional governments and certain town councils are themselves granting concessions on public land to this type of company, in some cases for periods of between 45 and 75 years, in a country where the stock of social rental housing does not exceed 1.72%, well below the European average of around 8-9%. The case of Culmia, the developer controlled by US fund Oaktree, is illustrative. In 2025 it handed over lot 3 of the Comunidad de Madrid's Plan Vive to German asset manager DWS by selling shares in the concession-holding company, in a deal worth 255 million euros. Indeed, Bavarian firm MEAG bought from Culmia a 50% stake in a portfolio that includes 1,137 homes from Plan Vive II (Comunidad de Madrid), 437 from the City of Madrid's affordable rental programme and 208 under the control of the Generalitat Valenciana. Is the housing bubble bursting? Home sales in Spain are starting to slow slightly as a result of the steep rise in housing prices. That is borne out by data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) compiled by Cushman & Wakefield and by studies such as BBVA Research, which forecast a 7.3% drop for this year, followed by a modest recovery of 0.6% in 2027. In its report for the second quarter of 2026, the property consultancy identified a year-on-year fall of 3.51% in these transactions up to May 2026, to a total of 286,000. Its analysts also note that worsening financing conditions are leading families to move into or remain longer in the rental market, putting additional pressure on rents in this segment. C&W's report points to "a spectacular 376% increase" year-on-year in investment in rental housing and notes that "in the first half of 2026 the volume of investment is already significantly higher than in the whole of 2025", reaching 2.934 billion euros, in transactions involving large-scale landlords and investment funds. This figure may seem to contradict the fall in home sales, but the two indicators capture different realities. While sales statistics count the number of transactions, investment volume reflects the money spent on acquiring homes and property portfolios, so a handful of large deals can substantially boost the total. In Spain, purchases of housing by companies and other legal entities represented 10% of transactions in 2025, according to the latest report from the General Council of Notaries. In any case, these numbers need to be treated with caution: they do not allow the real number of homes in corporate hands in Spain to be verified because of the opacity surrounding total holdings; they only show how buying and selling in the housing market is evolving. As for other research into the state of the housing market, Oxford Economics notes in its May report that it expects a moderation in house price growth – to 5% in 2027 – after it reached double-digit rates in 2025 (12.89%), with the figure forecast for this year likely to come in at close to 11%. The slowdown, however, could be temporary according to current projections. The slowdown in job creation, which is reducing incomes among the population, and the recent interest rate rise by the European Central Bank in response to renewed inflationary pressures are among the possible causes of this expected cooling. Housing has become the main concern for Spaniards. That is the view of 37.5% of those surveyed in the latest CIS barometer in September, who rank it above other economic problems (21.6%) or immigration (19.7%). This situation is becoming entrenched in the most pressured markets. Spain's six largest urban areas concentrate 36% of households, according to the Bank of Spain's annual report on the matter, and it is there that the gap between housing demand and the supply available to meet it remains widest.