Nine out of ten large investors have Spanish real estate in their sights this year, according to a new report by the international property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), in collaboration with IESE – a top-ranking global business school.

Based on a poll of more than 100 leading property investors both in Spain and abroad, the report reveals that 89% of those surveyed have a high or very high priority for investing in Spain this year. 47% of them have investment budgets of over €100m.

53% of investors were focused on office space in Madrid and Barcelona, followed by 46% in logistics and 44% in shopping centres, all of which are management-intensive investment strategies.

Spanish residential property was a priority for 38% of the investment managers surveyed, and 31% said they planned to invest in building land, showing how much investor sentiment has changed in recent years. Not long ago investors had zero interest in land for residential building – the speculative asset of choice in the boom years, where prices inflated the most, and subsequently collapsed the most.

This positive report by JLL/IESE on investor sentiment towards Spanish real estate comes hard on the heels of a recent report from international property consultants CBRE revealing that Spain is the third most favoured market in Europe amongst professional investors, behind Germany and the UK. So if these reports are anything to go by, it appears that professional investors have a large appetite for Spanish real estate in 2016.

What does that mean for property buyers? It might mean a greater selection of new homes to choose from as the pipeline of developments fills up with new projects financed by foreign investors, many of them in Barcelona, Madrid, and on the Spanish coast, plus the Balearic and Canary islands. More choice is usually a good thing for house-hunters.