The District brings together the main real estate players with a focus on housing

To consolidate Barcelona as a reference point for Real Estate on a European scale and to generate synergies among the different actors in the real estate sector, with the Catalan capital as its epicenter. With this objective, The District congress was born in 2022, and with this same goal, it celebrates its third edition at the Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona, consolidated as the largest European Real Estate event from an investment perspective.

The congress, aimed at professionals and investment capital, will bring together the main actors in the real estate sector until Friday. With a proposal that includes more than 300 exhibitors, presentations, and networking spaces, the event expects to attract 12,000 professionals, 20% more than the previous year. In what will be the most international edition to date, the event will attract delegates from some thirty countries. The District looks outwards, with the aim of positioning itself internationally as a global reference in this field.

"This third edition, which we expected to be one of consolidation, has gained momentum and acquired a very powerful international dimension," highlighted Albert Planas, general director of the event's organizing company, Nebext. After two editions, he argued that "the sector has clearly embraced the congress and has emerged as a protagonist within the capital market in the real estate sector," turning Barcelona into a key point in the sector, also internationally.

The international presence is noticeable among the firms exhibiting at the fair, which cover all areas related to Real Estate, especially from the investor's point of view. Linked to one or another area of the sector, all have something in common: they have come to the fair with the desire to build networks and expand their business opportunities. And the fair also provides spaces prepared for conversations to flow, even with rooms reserved for one to one meetings.

Attendees close deals in situ even by phone, as an executive discreetly comments at a prudent distance from the exhibitors. Others do so openly in front of their stands, while others comment on their arrival at the venue, with a high police presence after protesters tried to enter the fair to protest in defense of the right to housing, as they did in previous editions.

From inside the hall, various executives have pointed to public-private collaboration as a response to the situation of a lack of affordable housing. The general director of Nebext has defended that this is precisely one of the central themes of this edition, and that "the first social problem in the State is access to housing." In a context in which 2.5% of the housing stock is social housing, Planas has estimated that more than 700,000 homes will have to be built before 2030 in the State, which will be equivalent to 5% of GDP. Given the magnitude of the resources and investment needed, he has remarked that "neither the private sector alone nor the public sector will be able to do it."

Sector executives are committed to promoting this public-private collaboration and also to gaining available land to build homes, as highlighted by the director of the CBRE consultancy in Barcelona, Xavier Güell, who has emphasized in 22@, where he believes that housing construction should be promoted. From Cushman & Wakefield, its CEO, Oriol Barrachina, has agreed that this problem exists and that "it is not being resolved."

The executives have presented their visions from a hall that has brought together 307 exhibitors, with companies from all areas of the sector, from developers to consultants, not only national and international with a presence in Barcelona, but also from foreign markets, such as the Dubai consultancy United Hills. "It is the first time we have participated in a fair outside our country, and we have chosen to do so in Barcelona because we hope to generate many contacts," according to one of its representatives.

Sector executives are committed to promoting public-private collaboration and to gaining available land to build homes

Mortgage advisors, insurers, design and architecture studios, and real estate marketing companies are also part of the salon's offerings, where emerging proposals have also landed, most of them for the first time. This is also the case of Barcelona-based Columat, which commercializes smart lockers for residential and office buildings, and has opted to participate in the congress to "attract new clients and to position itself within the sector," as explained from their stand.

Another of the many recently created companies that have bet on The District for the first time in this edition has been Revicasa, specialized in home inspection to analyze the state of the property before its purchase, as detailed by the company, which has been operating between Barcelona and Madrid for a year and a half. It has come to the salon to "seek synergies," the same objective with which the French company Work With Island has participated, offering individual soundproof cabins for working, and which landed in the Spanish market last year.

The international dimension that the event has been acquiring is not only perceived in its exhibitors, but is also evident in the event's speakers; global executives from players such as Blackstone, Rockfield, Goldman Sachs, Hines, and Starwood Capital Group, among many others, will pass through the congress. They will do so within The District World Summit 2024, which will feature more than 400 speakers who will analyze the trends shaping the sector in Europe and the evolution of the real estate market. Among them are the director of Hines Spain, Vanessa Gelado; the head of Real Estate in Europe for Blackstone, James Seppala, and the principal of The Carlyle Group, Domingo Etcheverria.

The congress will also host interventions from company executives such as Rockfield, with Josep Franch; from Starwood Capital Group, with Jon Asumendi, from Goldman Sachs, with Javier Solís, and from The Corporate Group, an investment attraction firm in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with Ayman Alawadhi, as speakers, figures that confirm "the convening power of the event," according to Planas. All of them will contribute to shaping an x-ray of a sector marked by a context of falling interest rates, and in which trends such as flexible housing, the transformation of offices, the potential of sectors such as life science, as well as the urgency of building affordable housing, predominate.