A contract worth €52.45 million
Sareb has awarded Aliseda Servicios de Gestión Inmobiliaria, a company controlled by the American fund Blackstone, lot B of its global asset management service. The contract has a budget of €43,353,426.79 without tax, €52,457,646.42 with VAT, according to reports from El Mundo newspaper.
The service began in September and will run until December 2028, with the possibility of extension until 2030. It was signed by Sareb's chief executive, Eduard Mendiluce, and authorised by the company's board of directors, which falls under the Ministry of Economy.
In the selection process, Aliseda and Servihabitat, owned by Hipoges and controlled by the Pollen Street Capital fund, obtained the highest scores, but for now only the Blackstone contract is definitively approved.
What Aliseda will do
The assignment goes beyond selling flats, commercial premises or land. Aliseda will act as the integral manager of the assets, always following Sareb's instructions:
- market homes, commercial premises and land;
- manage rental income;
- draw up reports on non-payment and vulnerable tenants;
- deal with illegal occupations and possession recovery of properties;
- and prepare homes for transfer to Casa 47, the state housing company attached to the Ministry of Housing.
The last point is especially relevant. Sareb has reserved more than 40,000 properties for Casa 47, and their transfer requires works and actions to ensure they are habitable.
The political contradiction
The award has come to light during a full Government offensive against large funds. On Friday, during the vote on housing decrees in Congress, the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, summed it up this way: "You are either with the vulture funds or with the people".
Critics point out that this rhetoric does not sit well with a public company awarding a subsidiary of one of these funds the management of thousands of flats, including social housing, that will end up in the public housing company. Sareb, created after the banking crisis to manage toxic assets of rescued entities, has often relied on Blackstone's expertise in property management.
The transition is not without internal conflicts either: the CSIF trade union has filed a lawsuit to demand that 247 Sareb workers be transferred to Casa 47. It argues that dismissing staff whilst their functions are transferred to a new public body is illegal.
Marina Alta, one of the districts with the most Sareb properties
The operation is directly relevant to the comarca. Marina Alta is one of the areas in Alicante province where Sareb has accumulated the most homes. In 2023, when the Government announced it would allocate them to social rent, the "bad bank" had 536 properties spread across 14 municipalities in the comarca. Dénia topped the list with 242, 13.4% of all those Sareb had in the province, ahead of Gata de Gorgos (83), Beniarbeig (53), Xàbia (35), Pego (33), Benissa (21), Els Poblets (20) and Pedreguer (12).
Part of this stock has already started to reach Casa 47. In the August call for applications, the state company put 112 homes recovered from Sareb in the Marina Alta up for affordable rent: 66 in Pedreguer and 46 in Dénia, the two municipalities with the most properties in the entire province. Rents range from €350 to €1,066 per month and cannot exceed 30% of the municipality's average income. For Dénia they represent an important part of its scarce affordable housing stock: until now it only had 67 officially protected properties for more than 50,000 residents.
The mayors of Dénia and Pedreguer have arranged a meeting with Casa 47 to discuss their specific cases, and Dénia's mayor, Rafa Carrió, has asked for the city to be included in the next phases to receive more homes.
It has not been detailed which specific properties Aliseda will manage or whether they include those in Marina Alta. What is clear is that a large part of the stock that must feed public housing, also in the comarca, will first pass through the hands of a private manager controlled by a large international fund.
In the midst of the pre-campaign
The controversy comes at a particularly sensitive time. The failure of the housing decrees in Congress left two sides in the comarca: relief for owners of holiday lets and uncertainty for tenants, in an area where buying a home in Xàbia already requires 69% of family income. Housing will be one of the major issues in the general election on 29 November.
