From Scrap Metal to Real Estate Empire: Moroccan Immigrant’s 50 Million Euro Success Story

Mohamed El Madani is a successful Moroccan entrepreneur in Spain, a country he joined at the age of 10. Brilliant in school, he obtained several scholarships. He got his start in the banking sector, before beginning to build his empire in real estate. The Moroccan is now at the head of Urbanflip, one of the best real estate companies in Madrid. His mission is to acquire real estate located in upscale neighborhoods of the capital, renovate them and resell them.

As part of this project, Mohamed analyzes real estate portals to identify good properties. He compares prices and evaluates other factors such as the floor, the orientation of the balcony, the existence of an elevator or the possibility of adding rooms. A team visits the premises and engages in negotiations with the owners to purchase the property. The state provides only 10 to 25% of the investment. The rest comes from individuals whose contributions range from 5,000 to 80,000 euros each. The project has been a great success. The more than 1,000 private investors who have participated have obtained an average return of 30%.

"Before, for some, I was just a Moor, now they see me as an Arab investor," Mohamed confides to El País. Life has not been rosy for the Moroccan who collected scrap metal with his family to earn money. "Sometimes the police would stop us in an industrial area of Humanes at three in the morning, and when they saw a father and two 12-13 year old children, they wondered what we were doing there when we should have been in school," he details.