Blackstone Begins an Empire in Spain

Blackstone Group, builder of the biggest single-family rental home business in the U.S., is using its experience to replicate the model in Spain, where property prices have dropped 40 percent since the 2007 peak. The world's largest private equity firm agreed in July to purchase 18 apartment buildings from the city of Madrid for EUR(€) 125.5 million ($173 million). "Building a business from scratch without a single employee and buying something like $150 million in homes per week requires a learning process," Anthony Myers, senior managing director of real estate at Blackstone, said at a conference in Barcelona in mid-October. "When we looked at the situation in Spain, we thought we could replicate a lot of the systems and technology that we created in the U.S." (Bloomberg Businessweek November 11 - November 17, 2013 Page 50)