After just over a year full of challenges and uncertainty for the real estate sector, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, architect Jaime Fasja, general director and CEO of developer Thor Urbana, is already beginning to see a much more positive outlook for the industry.

In an interview with Real Estate Investment, the businessman explained that each country, each city and each asset reacted differently to the health crisis. For example, in beach hotels, such as in Los Cabos or the Riviera Maya, tourism did not take long to return once the reopening of activities began, in June 2020; on the other hand, city hotels had a difficult year due to the lack of users.

“There were many tenants who went through very difficult problems; many tenants who have no longer been able or who will not be able to reopen their doors. And we as developers and owners of shopping centers and hotels, what we always seek is to help them; to be on their side, to see how we find a way to survive such difficult moments, looking for them to endure and that once things improve, we can have a position where they can re-create an economy and get ahead, ”said Fasja.

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He added that, due to the brake on non-essential activities as a measure to avoid contagion by Covid-19, the Mexican real estate industry suffered a setback; which has caused a strong blow to the country's economy.

However, there were some sectors of the industry that have benefited from the pandemic; such is the case of the logistics industrial sector, which had a positive year thanks to the exponential growth of electronic commerce.

“This very accelerated growth brought with it, on the one hand, a much greater need for logistics spaces for distribution and delivery of all these products that were purchased; and on the other hand, also between the trade war that the United States brings with China, together with the signing of the new T-MEC, as we are beginning to see certain conditions for the issue of manufacturing and trade with the United States to increase; which also brought important needs of industrial spaces ”, indicated the CEO of Thor Urbana.

In this sense, he highlighted the importance of continuing to bet on Mexico for real estate development; as well as seeking the support of the authorities to continue attracting the necessary investments to reactivate the country's economy and recover the jobs lost due to the pandemic.

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Currently, Thor Urbana is about to open a hotel of the Ritz-Carlton chain in Mexico City. And it has various projects under development, such as a hotel in Tulum and another in the Riviera Nayarita; as well as mixed-use projects in the city of  Tijuana and San Luis Potosí.

For the next few months, Thor Urbana will seek to develop projects mainly in three corridors that have been very important for the country: Baja California Sur, Jalisco / Nayarit and the Riviera Maya; in which there are great opportunities for the industry, in addition to being cities where attractive infrastructure for investment is built.

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