The data center market and Build to Rent, real estate trends for 2022

After a drop in the construction of new real estate developments and a certain immobility caused by the uncertainty of the pandemic, the real estate market is once again recovering its growth rate strongly and there will be an economic boost.

According to the 2022 Trends Report prepared by the Gesvalt consultancy, house prices will stabilize after a year-on-year rise of 3.7%, although the demand for rental flats by investors will increase and the numbers of sales and purchases will increase. of mortgages. In addition, it predicts that the Build to rent will be one of the models that will experience higher growth this year, with business figures that are expected to exceed 10% year-on-year. This data certifies the success of this trend after it grew by 30% in 2021.

Data centers, a sector with a lot of growth potential

All the trends that emerged during the pandemic will continue this coming year. Among others, the boom in the logistics sector. This segment has become the engine of economic recovery in the real estate market after the volume invested grew by 33%, with Barcelona and Madrid being the leading territories. The growth expectations for the Catalan capital are very notable, calculating an increase of 400,000 m2 in its logistics park. In this sense, it is also worth noting the exponential growth of data centers. This infrastructure is necessary to store the large volume of data that is currently generated in our territory and, therefore, it is a critical asset. According to this report, this year the volume of investment in data centers will double, with the aim of reaching an installed capacity of 600 MW in 2025.

Due to the growing need for spaces to store data, Adequa has been working for a year on the creation of the D-hub Òdena, a knowledge and data campus where the first hyperscale data center in the Barcelona metropolitan area would be located. This hub is designed to host companies from the technology sector specialized in cloud, IoT, artificial intelligence and everything that has to do with industry 4.0.

Digitization, key to improving processes
Finally, another of the trends for 2022, linked to the rise of data centers, will be the digitization of the sector and the use of sustainable processes. Gesvalt assures that promoters and real estate agencies are betting on looking for alternatives that allow some processes to be carried out in an automated way and without human intervention. For this reason, they are incorporating the latest technological innovations such as Big Data or Machine Learning to improve their services and be able to foresee, for example, the demand for housing that they are going to experience.