Barcelona’s property market has collapsed, and Barcelona’s estate agents’ association (API) forecasts that prices for resale properties will fall 10% this year, reports the Spanish daily ‘El Pais’.

“There is no market,” Joan Ollé, president of API in Barcelona, told El Pais. The credit crunch and property market crisis has paralysed the market in the Catalan capital, and property sales are just 10% to 15% of what they were 2 years ago.

Compared to last year, prices for resale properties fell by 1% in the third quarter, with prices set to fall by 8% to 10% by the end of the year, according to Ollé. It will be the second year in a row of falling prices, adding up to a more than 20% fall in real terms, once inflation is taken into account.

The average price of resale property in Barcelona is now 4,703 Euros/m2, down from 5,179 Euros/m2 in June 2007, according to figures from comprarcasa.es, the API real estate agents network.

Old Town and Eixample property prices down the most

Resale property prices are falling the most in the Old Town Gothic Quarter (Barrio Gótico, or Ciutat Vella, which also includes the Born, Barceloneta, and the Raval), most popular with foreign tourists and buyers, and in the right hand side of the Eixample (Eixample Dreta, Ensanche Derecha). Prices in the Eixample Dreta are down 13%, and 10% in the Old Town.

Resale property prices are down the most in the right hand side of the Eixample (-13%), and in the Old Town