60% of the 80,000 to 90,000 real estate agents in Spain have closed down, according to Santiago Baena, president of CGCOAPI real estate agents’ association. Even so, there is still “a little bit of adjustment” to expect.

Baena described the situation facing the real estate sector as a “severe adjustment” but denied that it is a “crisis”.

If there is any crisis, it is a financial one, argued Baena, and warned that the next set of financial results released by the big banks will be “scandalous.”

Baena sees the present situation as a necessary “cleansing” of the sector, and forecasts that this process will have run its course by the end of the year. Normality will return in 2009, but he warns that things will not be what they were in the boom years.