Nowadays, Guadalajara is one of the cities in Mexico with a wide and dynamic real estate offer. For that reason, every developer wishing to enter the market should question themselves what its products need to differentiate themselves among the competition and become profitable investments. For Nicolás Santacruz – Gava Capital Acquisitions Director- is easy: planning. After all, every new real estate project must be designed with the right target market in mind – whether it is investors or final users – and offer something attractive for it.
“Real estate products are intimately related to demographics” Santacruz affirmed in the “Alternativas de fondeo y capitalización” (“Funding and Capitalization Alternatives”) panel hosted by Erico García, General Director of a well-known real estate medium. Alberto Padilla Luengas, Brig CEO, and Xavier Iturbide, Investus Capital Partner CEO, were also participants. Over the conference, the experts talked about design modifications in real estate development, new client’s necessities, and the improvement of sales strategies during the pandemic.
Santacruz’s feeling was shared by Padilla Luengas, who said that the easiest way to sell any project today is by balancing creativity, market knowledge, and the right price. However, it’s also important that clients can get to know the real estate products. The experts bet for the process digitalization because, as Santacruz mentioned, those developers that can quickly adapt to the new necessities after COVID-19 are going to be the ones with a competitive advantage in any market.
“Organizing open houses with the same investors has worked very well for us. The virtual tours help to interact with clients because they can see the product without being physically there” exemplified Padilla Luengas. On the other hand, Iturbide thinks that digitizing sale processes can’t be done without knowing the market. He emphasized the importance of building new developments to satisfy current demands in order to avoid market saturation.
Iturbide raised the point by stating that “there are a lot of 4-million pesos and up apartments in Guadalajara because most developers are building them in the same zone. However, there is a segment with an amazing number of approved credits: the 1-million pesos housing. It has a lot of demand, but a low offer. Whoever builds for that market, it is going to sell its product no matter what. The biggest problem is that there isn’t any funding for those developers because they can’t be sold in pre-sale, unlike the speculative projects.” Santacruz further adds that Jalisco’s capital has an oversupply of vertical housing of 3.5 and 4-million pesos, a product with an uncertain demand whereas there are big opportunities for those 1-million pesos housing projects due to their link to the industrial growth of the city.
Guadalajara is one of the most important urban centers in Mexico, having great connectivity with Mexico City, Toluca, Querétaro, Puebla, Guanajuato, Zapopan, Zacatecas, Durango, Gómez Palacio, Torreón, Saltillo, Monterrey, Chihuahua, Tampico, Tijuana, Mexicali, Hermosillo, Obregón, Los Mochis, Culiacán, Mazatlán y Tepic.