Blackstone creates Testa Home to manage 20,000 rental apartments

Blackstone has taken a new turn in its management strategy for its rental apartments. The fund has created a new company, Testa Home, which will be in charge of managing 20,000 flats coming mainly from the portfolio of two of its socimis, Testa and Fidere.

Juan Pablo Vera, current president of Fidere, will be in charge of leading this new company, in which he will be its General Director and executive director of the Testa Home board of directors.

The new company will only be the manager of the properties, since these will continue under the umbrella of both socimis, which participate as partners with 58.12% in the case of Testa and 41.88% in the case of Fidere.

Testa considers that “this restructuring will improve efficiency in the management of its portfolio, optimizing operating costs and profitability, and will contribute to providing a better service to its tenants”.

Of the 20,000 apartments, 11,000 come from Testa, while Fidere contributes 6,500 units. Likewise, Testa Home will be in charge of managing 2,000 Aliseda homes and 500 from Hispania.

In the specific case of Aliseda, Testa Home is only responsible for the operation of complete rental housing buildings, since the perimeter of the company in the residential sector is much larger. Specifically, the servicer, in which Banco Santander participates in addition to Blackstone with 49% of the capital, has a portfolio of some 30,000 homes that are managed by Aliseda and Anticipa.

Testa CEO resigns

The announcement of the creation of Testa Homes comes just weeks after Wolfgang Beck announced his .

The German manager was appointed CEO of Testa Residencial in January 2018, replacing Miguel Oñate, who remained as vice president, with the aim of reinforcing the configuration of his executive team for its IPO that June.

Although its debut on the stock market was delayed a month due to political instability in Spain, Testa became the second largest company by capitalization volume on the MAB.

The socimi of flats for rent was established in 2016 by Merlín, Santander and BBVA from the portfolio of homes that they added after the merger of the socimi directed by Ismael Clemente and the property business of the former Metrovacesa.