Property news

Just 2.8pc of Spaniards plan to buy a home in 2013, according to the latest survey by Spain’s CIS research group, which produces the national consumer confidence index.

Consumer confidence fell 13.4pc in April compared to the previous month, one of the worst falls since the index started in 2004.

43pc think that house prices will fall more next year than this year, whilst 46pc think prices will stay the same. Only 5pc think house prices will actually start to rise next year.

79pc think the economic situation is worse today than 6 months ago, and more than half think it will get harder to find a job.

Increasing numbers of Scandinavians are taking advantage of the crisis to buy holiday-homes in Spain.

According to a recent article at the website Investment Europe, “Figures published by Fastighetsbyrån, part of Swedish banking group Swedbank, suggest Swedish and Norwegian property buyers have pushed hard into the Spanish residential property market, as British and German buyers have withdrawn in the past half-decade.”

The article goes onto explain that “over the four year period, the number of UK buyers has dropped by 65% and German buyers by 3%. However, the number of Norwegian buyers is up 108%, and Swedes by 138%. The total market is still down 33% from its 2007 peak, the figures also suggest.”

It’s not hard to see how Scandinavians are tempted by Spanish property: Their economies are relatively strong, as are their currencies (the Norwegian and Swedish Krone/Krona have both risen by around 5pc against the Euro since the Spanish property bubble burst at the end of 2007, whilst the British Pound has fallen almost 20pc); Spanish property prices on the coast are down around 50pc or more from the peak, and the sun doesn’t shine much back at home. So Scandinavian buyers are taking advantage of the market to snap up bargains on the Mediterranean coast, and who can blame them?

So good news of a sorts, but Scandinavian buyers are not a panacea for the glut of holiday-homes on the coast. For a start, with the pick of the best properties, I doubt they will be tempted by all the over-built crap on the coast that also needs to be sold. And unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of them to take the place of the retreating Brits, who dominated the market during the boom.

A final thought: If there is a moral to this story it’s don’t buy property (abroad) in a boiling real estate market; wait until it crashes. But how do you know when a property market is boiling? There are usually plenty of signals, as there were in Spain for anyone prepared to do the research. Crashes, on the other hand, are easy to spot: Just look at Spain today. But how do you know when prices hit rock bottom, as they must one day? Now that I can’t answer.

You can read the full article from Investment Europe here: Swedes, Norwegians lead charge to buy Spanish property

Increasing numbers of Scandinavians are taking advantage of the crisis to buy holiday-homes in Spain.

According to a recent article at the website Investment Europe, “Figures published by Fastighetsbyrån, part of Swedish banking group Swedbank, suggest Swedish and Norwegian property buyers have pushed hard into the Spanish residential property market, as British and German buyers have withdrawn in the past half-decade.”

The article goes onto explain that “over the four year period, the number of UK buyers has dropped by 65% and German buyers by 3%. However, the number of Norwegian buyers is up 108%, and Swedes by 138%. The total market is still down 33% from its 2007 peak, the figures also suggest.”

It’s not hard to see how Scandinavians are tempted by Spanish property: Their economies are relatively strong, as are their currencies (the Norwegian and Swedish Krone/Krona have both risen by around 5pc against the Euro since the Spanish property bubble burst at the end of 2007, whilst the British Pound has fallen almost 20pc); Spanish property prices on the coast are down around 50pc or more from the peak, and the sun doesn’t shine much back at home. So Scandinavian buyers are taking advantage of the market to snap up bargains on the Mediterranean coast, and who can blame them?

So good news of a sorts, but Scandinavian buyers are not a panacea for the glut of holiday-homes on the coast. For a start, with the pick of the best properties, I doubt they will be tempted by all the over-built crap on the coast that also needs to be sold. And unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of them to take the place of the retreating Brits, who dominated the market during the boom.

A final thought: If there is a moral to this story it’s don’t buy property (abroad) in a boiling real estate market; wait until it crashes. But how do you know when a property market is boiling? There are usually plenty of signals, as there were in Spain for anyone prepared to do the research. Crashes, on the other hand, are easy to spot: Just look at Spain today. But how do you know when prices hit rock bottom, as they must one day? Now that I can’t answer.

You can read the full article from Investment Europe here: Swedes, Norwegians lead charge to buy Spanish property

Thanks to the Government’s financial reforms this could be the worst year yet for Spanish house prices say leading analysts

The Government’s financial reform will push down house prices more this year than any other since the crisis began forecast analysts like Madrid-based R.R. de Acuña y Asociados and international ratings agency S&P.

R.R. de Acuña y Asociados are forecasting price declines of up to 14pc this year, the biggest fall since the National Institute of Statistics began publishing its current house price index.

S&P are forecasting that up to 25pc of Spanish mortgages will be under water by the end of the year, up from 8pc in 2010.

The reaction of banks to the financial reforms will be one of the main drivers of price falls this year says Fernando Rodríguez de Acuña, a partner at R.R. de Acuña y Asociados. “Banks are preparing themselves for big losses in the real estate sector,” he said, quoted in the Spanish press.

The financial reforms are forcing banks to make bigger write-offs on their property portfolios, which means bigger discounts on the properties they have for sale. That will force private vendors to reduce their prices too.

There has been a recent 30pc surge in the number of vendors dropping their asking prices, reports Idealista.com, a property portal.

It is widely reported in the Spanish press that house prices have already fallen 30pc, though the Minister of the Economy says 35pc.

“We suspect prices have fallen more than 30pc since the peak, though we accept that part of the adjustment has been delayed by lenders who have been accumulating repossessed properties,” says Raj Badiani, and economist at IHS Global Insight.

Another problem, according to Fernando Encinar, head of research at Idealista.com, is that investors don’t believe the values that banks are giving their property portfolios. The suspicion is that banks are overstating the value of their portfolios.

Another clutch of downbeat news stories from the Spanish housing market

The value of house sales fell 37.5pc in 2011, according to new figures from the Government (Fomento). There were 307,931 home sales last year (excluding social housing), valued at 50.5 billion Euros, 37.5pc down on the year before.

More or less the same story, but from a different source, comes the news that there were 370,204 home sales last year (including social housing), according to the property register (registradores.org). That Spanish housing market is now the smallest it has been since the Property Register started publishing this data series back in 2005. Transactions fell 11pc in the last quarter of the year.

The registrars also published this chart which illustrates how the market is dominated by just four regions: Andalucia, Madrid, Catalonia, and the Valencian Community. Between them they make up almost two thirds of the market, and it is useful to keep this in mind when reading stories about ‘the Spanish property market’.

Resale asking prices fell an annualised 3.4pc in the first quarter of this year, according to the asking price index published by Idealista.com, a leading portal. “The difficult access to credit, and the measures introduced by the Government to force banks and the real estate sector to continue the house price adjustment will probably maintain prices falls for the rest of the year,” said Fernando Encinar, head of research at Idealista. However, he also added that “today you can find homes at prices that seemed unthinkable, especially from the estate agents that are getting the best discounts in the market.” One man’s pain is another man’s gain.

New planning approvals fell an annualised 31pc in January to just 4,698, according to the Government (Fomento). At this rate there might not be any house-building industry left to speak of left. Back in the boom home builders were the lords of the economy. How the mighty are fallen.

And finally, BBVA, one of Spain’s biggest banks, says the market will continue shrinking and house prices falling until 2013. They expect transactions to fall an additional 20pc and prices 15pc before the market bottoms out.

Another clutch of downbeat news stories from the Spanish housing market

The value of house sales fell 37.5pc in 2011, according to new figures from the Government (Fomento). There were 307,931 home sales last year (excluding social housing), valued at 50.5 billion Euros, 37.5pc down on the year before.

More or less the same story, but from a different source, comes the news that there were 370,204 home sales last year (including social housing), according to the property register (registradores.org). That Spanish housing market is now the smallest it has been since the Property Register started publishing this data series back in 2005. Transactions fell 11pc in the last quarter of the year.

The registrars also published this chart which illustrates how the market is dominated by just four regions: Andalucia, Madrid, Catalonia, and the Valencian Community. Between them they make up almost two thirds of the market, and it is useful to keep this in mind when reading stories about ‘the Spanish property market’.

Resale asking prices fell an annualised 3.4pc in the first quarter of this year, according to the asking price index published by Idealista.com, a leading portal. “The difficult access to credit, and the measures introduced by the Government to force banks and the real estate sector to continue the house price adjustment will probably maintain prices falls for the rest of the year,” said Fernando Encinar, head of research at Idealista. However, he also added that “today you can find homes at prices that seemed unthinkable, especially from the estate agents that are getting the best discounts in the market.” One man’s pain is another man’s gain.

New planning approvals fell an annualised 31pc in January to just 4,698, according to the Government (Fomento). At this rate there might not be any house-building industry left to speak of left. Back in the boom home builders were the lords of the economy. How the mighty are fallen.

And finally, BBVA, one of Spain’s biggest banks, says the market will continue shrinking and house prices falling until 2013. They expect transactions to fall an additional 20pc and prices 15pc before the market bottoms out.

The first column gives the regions, the second the total number o repossessions in that region since 2007, the third column gives population by region, and the final column gives the ratio of repossession per thousand inhabitants.

The table is arranged by ratio of repossessions/inhabitants in descending order, so you can see where the population is suffering the most from repossessions.

The situation is at its worst in the Valencian Region, where there have been almost 12 repossession for every thousand inhabitants since the crisis began, followed by Murcia, with almost 11, both popular destinations for holiday-home buyers.

At the other end of the scale is the Basque Country, in the North of Spain, where there were just 2.2 repos/thousand inhabitants, and where there are very few foreign holiday-home owners, if any.

The data comes from the National Institute of Statistics, the table produced by Idealista.com.

The first column gives the regions, the second the total number o repossessions in that region since 2007, the third column gives population by region, and the final column gives the ratio of repossession per thousand inhabitants.

The table is arranged by ratio of repossessions/inhabitants in descending order, so you can see where the population is suffering the most from repossessions.

The situation is at its worst in the Valencian Region, where there have been almost 12 repossession for every thousand inhabitants since the crisis began, followed by Murcia, with almost 11, both popular destinations for holiday-home buyers.

At the other end of the scale is the Basque Country, in the North of Spain, where there were just 2.2 repos/thousand inhabitants, and where there are very few foreign holiday-home owners, if any.

The data comes from the National Institute of Statistics, the table produced by Idealista.com.