Interview with Álvaro Satué, "it is My Job to Ensure that Euroval is Always at the Forefront of the Sector"

With more than twenty-five years in the valuation and finance sector, Álvaro Satué joins the Euroval team as technical director. His previous experience in various entities, as well as the awards he has obtained throughout his career, including the 2011 Research in Valuation Award, support his professional career. Since 2014, Satué has provided his services to Euroval as a consultant until, in February, he officially joined the management team of our company.

Congratulations on joining Euroval. What are the reasons that led you to accept this change?

Euroval is a dynamic company that looks to the future with optimism and a spirit of intellectual curiosity. I, like Pedro de Lepe, a cabin boy on the Santa María caravel, could not fail to embark.

In what aspects will your responsibilities and the work you will perform as technical director change?

As technical director, you have to be shoulder to shoulder with the technical team on a daily basis, you have to encourage the best of each one, know how to assume mistakes and learn from them; capture the changing needs and rearrange the means to adjust to the new times. I understand that the responsibilities of management must be assumed while reinforcing the responsibilities of the team members.

What are the Objectives You Have Set for this Year that is Beginning?

We are in an expansive moment for the sector and we must grow with it: we aspire to grow above the general trend. On the other hand, we are also subject to increasing demands in quality, transparency and efficiency. We have to be able to continuously review our techniques and procedures to improve in all lines.

And, What are the Main Challenges You Face as Technical Director?

The sector has changed with the crisis and will change more in the near future. There will probably be greater integration of the framework in which the European financial sector operates. The challenges, in general, I understand will be in the line pointed out before of demanding that we improve quality, transparency and efficiency and, to be more specific, we will surely have to improve the capacity to distance ourselves from possible bubbles by more clearly defining what that of the mortgage value is; we will have to improve and refine our databases and their exploitation, and all this while being more readable, more transparent.

You are specialized in complex valuations such as economic exploitations, land and promotions, among others. What can your previous experience bring to the work you are going to develop now?

I believe that in Spain the use of the value approach as an investment or economic exploitation will be strengthened. We probably will not see too many new urban developments but, at least for three reasons, I think we will see a boom in this financial approach: one is that the housing rental market should become wider and deeper, as it already is in almost all the countries around us, favoring greater rationality of the sector and also the mobility of people, two clearly positive aspects. A second reason for the boom in the exploitation approach could be that it allows a better anchoring of values to the real economy and better protection from speculative phenomena. And a third is that the growth we expect from the economy, together with the experience of the crisis, will possibly cause valuations of other real estate or productive entities to grow to cover financing and investment needs. The valuation techniques corresponding to this group are more sensitive to errors, so they should be treated by specialists.

What changes have there been in the last decade and what changes do you foresee for the next five years?

The last decade has been that of the crisis. In this period, the number of appraisal companies went from 56 in 2006 to 36 in 2015; from 1.5 million appraisals in 2007 to a minimum in 2013 of 0.7 million, while the appraised amount fell from 0.8 to 0.3 trillion (millions of millions). The turnover from appraisals fell from 570 million euros to a minimum in 2013 of 182, which in 2015 had recovered to 235 million.

But, in addition, clients, as I said before, are more demanding in terms of time, quality and transparency and in prices. In addition, mass valuations have been introduced in these years, in which it is intended to obtain portfolio values without incurring high costs. In fact, they are extraordinarily low. Many appraisal companies have made automated value estimators available to their clients, mainly for housing, for guidance purposes. Contracting with financial entities has generally been centralized and data transfer is carried out centrally through interfaces between the respective systems.

It is likely that the Administration will clear or help to clear the path ahead, for example, by making available to sector operators databases of sales and cadastral data, promoting unbiased databases, etc. Other countries are doing that. It is not only about having your own data, but about having real and commonly accepted data, and there the Administration has to make its contribution.
In short, I hope for a renewal of the sector, greater support of real data, more quality and reliability, more efficiency and transparency.

In addition to his university education, throughout his professional career he has completed various courses related to real estate valuation and finance. Do you consider it necessary to continue training in this sector? Why?

Always. We live in times of rapid change and we have to, on the one hand, maintain the curiosity and capacity for observation to perceive them, which is sometimes not as easy as it seems in hindsight. On the other hand, we have to continuously acquire new skills and improve the ones we have to reposition ourselves and stay aligned with life.

Questions in 60 Seconds

Last Book You Read.

"The Black Swan" by Nassim Kaleb. To finish. An essay on unforeseeable events of high impact. Interesting. I have Churchill's biography by Roy Jenkins open. And a rare and at the same time precious book that I strive to read in English: "Leviathan or, The Wale", by Philip Hoare.

City or Countryside?

I'll take both. I need the city and its air, the one that makes us free. And I am in love with the countryside, I am fascinated by almost everything you can recognize in nature.

Your Favorite Place in Seville.

As a Sevillian I am between regular and bad. In summer it is better not to go, but now you can enjoy the streets with orange trees, the center full of history, the river, the great river that was the sea...

Activity that You Enjoy Doing most in your Free Time.

Friends, books, countryside, trips...

A Confessable Vice.

Sudokus? Because I love wine, but that's not a vice: two recent discoveries, an elegant Pinot Noir in Krakow, a humble Tempranillo from La Rioja from a winegrower...

Tell Us about your Family.

I have three children in their twenties: a boy who is studying for a degree in mechatronics and participates in the Seville team of Formula Student, and two wonderful twins.