This is a website for buyers, owners, and sellers of property in Spain, offering reliable information and resources to help you get things done with confidence. It is run by Mark Stücklin, author of the Spanish Property Doctor Column in The Sunday Times (2005-2008), and the book ‘Need to Know: Buying Property in Spain’ published by Collins.
Price expectations of the majority tend to be self-fulfilling, and right now more than half of all Spaniards expect house prices to continue falling this year.
52.3pc of Spaniards expect house prices to fall further this year, whilst 35pc expect prices to remain unchanged, according to the latest survey by Spain’s CIS social research centre.
The survey finds that 4pc of adults plan to buy a home in 2013, suggesting weak demand that bodes ill for the market next year.
26pc of Spaniards blame the Government for falling property prices.
The prices expectations of the majority tend to be self-fulfilling, so on this basis alone it is rational to expect property prices to continue falling.
Given that property prices have done nothing but fall since the end of 2008, even according to official statistics, I find it encouraging that more than a third of Spaniards expect prices to stop falling this year.
JWhite says:
We have just sold our apartment on the Costa Blanca for 57% loss on what we paid in 2004. With the £ continuing to strengthen but the euro continuing to lose value against other currencies it made sense for us to sell before our losses increased further and with the huge amount of unemployment in Spain which is according to experts expected to continue to increase, I cannot see how property prices can do anything but fall further during the next year or so. We got out before prices dropped even further, but we are expecting to buy hopefully on the Costa Del Sol in a year or so when property prices there become more realistic as they are still too high in our opinion.
Mike says:
Hi JWhite, tell me aboutit.
With some 750,000 properties available for purchase, and most of them down the East/West Coast, from just where are all these buyers going to come?
Bumping up the IVA on property purchase is hardly likely to help anyone – buyers or sellers – and certainly not the Government.
And I repeat my own conviction that anyone (and that possibly includes most exPats who bought in Spain) who hold even a 50% mortgage, are in negative equity, and there’s no way that they can sell.
The number of once reasonably-satisfied owners that I speak to, who are now openly discussing either being re-possessed, or surrendering their keys as their only means of survival, are astronomic.
True there were always the speculators and the get-rich-quick merchants, but most of the people that I know were simply honest-Joes who wanted a taste of the Dream and were prepared to make financial sacrifices in their own Country to achieve it. Thse poor people are the sadder and wiser ones, and it’s going to take many years before Spain achieves a resurgence of confidence.
At least that’s my opinion.