Costa developers call for speeding up of urban planning red tape

Streamlining urban planning procedures and deadlines is essential so as not to hinder investments in Malaga. This was one of the main conclusions reached by the panel of experts gathered at the 'Malaga, a place to live and invest' roundtable event, organised by SUR together with Colliers, TM Grupo Inmobiliario and Ginkgo Advisor, which took place on Tuesday 27 June at the Vincci Selección Posada del Patio hotel.

Speakers blamed the long winded bureaucracy that holds back new projects and the lack of sites for development. Speaking at the event, Íñigo Molina, director of Colliers Andalucía, said: “It is essential to put plots on the market. More than 80% of transactions are second-hand. There is almost no new work because there are no sites to build on.”

The need to improve infrastructure across the Costa del Sol was also a pressing concern for the experts.

José Manuel Martín Rojo of TM Grupo Inmobiliario said Malaga city “must be provided with infrastructure” for the “residential tourists”. He also said that the profile of this type of resident has changed, as the average age has decreased, from 60 to 51 years. Martín Rojo said: "A younger client is coming who demands other services, who demands more, and more expensive and bigger housing”.

Antonio Truan, Spain and Portugal head for Ginkgo Advisor, said his Malaga city project in La Térmica has had more than a thousand calls from possible buyers of whom up to 70% are Scandinavians, French and Germans with high economic power. Truan said such clients “are looking for what Malaga gives: tranquility, security, sea and air”.

Ignacio Peinado, managing partner of the real estate group Urbania and President of Fadeco Promotores, said a huge problem in Malaga city was that “there are no plots … and that is the challenge: to promote ground to continue growing towards a sustainable city”.

Peinado added that “the increase in profitability depends on shortening the time” it takes to have the planning procedures completed.

Malaga's new councillor for Urban Planning, Carmen Casero, picked up the gauntlet of the sector's demands for greater administrative speed. “Something similar to an accelerator unit can be a good idea for management procedures,” she said gamely.

Casero said she wanted to see more coordination between departments and with the Junta. She highlighted the “bottleneck that we have to solve” as being the departments of Culture and Environment for their obstacles to licensing.