interest and now, from the investors’
point of view, the longing to move on a
system of operative rent is emerging.
Industrial investors in Italy were
mostly private investors (often past
entrepreneur that sold the business
and remain with leased real estate) with
no institutional investors approaching
this market, which was fundamentally
dominated by owner-occupiers (direct
ownerships or trough financial leasing).
We can reasonably expect a huge demand for extract value from real estate
trough sale and lease back, especially
nowadays with a young generation of
entrepreneurs and Private Equity) that
owns manufacturing subsidiaries and
is experiencing a considerable growth
in Italy.
The logistics sector has been evolving
into a real multinational game dominat-
ed by international focused investors /
developers during the last 10 years. The
sector related to carrier is also moving
in this direction, while the proper indus-
trial manufacturing industry real estate
investment, despite expectation, is still
plodding along.
This has personally affected my busi-
ness in a few ways, first, we now have
a legislation similar to US REIT that is
called SIIQ, which is perfect for high
yielding products like industrial to
be listed in the hands of professional
investors. The country will discover op-
erational lease and there will be a great
perspective opportunity for brokers
representing occupiers that would like
to shift from ownerships to tenancy
Regarding logistics, two of the largest
international logistic developers / in-
vestors – Prologis and Logicor - have
the largest portfolio; in particular, both
of them control around 1.000.000 sqm.
Prologis was built after a long decade
of direct development and Logicor
was constituted through a massive
acquisition campaign in the last three
years (acquisitions from fund liqui-
dation, etc.) – overall class A logistic
in Italy has quantified app. 10 mil sqm
(a quarter of the overall market). Still
on this Field Gazely (IGD), SEGRO (that
has recently acquired nr. 1 national
logistics developer) and companies like
Goodman and Panattoni just made 2/3
years’ experience and then they shut ac-
tivity. National take up in 2015 is around
600.000 sqm.
Even the international advisory sector
is poor and fragmented; in fact, CBRE,
JLL, and Cushman and Wakefield
have entirely no more than 10 brokers
(direct employed) on national basis.
Italian stock is quite old, in particular
properties built in the pre-war period
represent 10 percent of the total national stock, while properties built between
the end of World War II and the 70’s represent about 15 percent. The majority of
the stock was built between the 70’s and
1985 and between 1985, and 2008 with a
percentage of 30 percent (first category)
and 35 percent (second one), finally the
stock built after 2008 is very low, just
10 percent. In fact, after 2008 developments have been very scarce. Italy has
recently discovered the phenomenon of
“structural vacancy” referred to assets
