Brexit has made a bad situation worse for the housing market in Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada ski resort.

Last week I wrote about the property market in Baqueira, where sales are increasing and prices are rising on the back of affluent Spanish demand, mainly from Madrid. This week, in this two part series of articles on Spanish skiing destinations, I look at the Sierra Nevada resort in Andalusia’s Granada province, not far from Granada City, the Costa Tropical, and Costa del Sol.

Baqueira may be recovering fast but the same cannot be said for Sierra Nevada. There is too much property on the market, and too few buyers, so prices have been stagnating around 50% below peak for the last 12 months though at least they have stopped falling, according to Juan Hernández, boss of Inmonieve – a local property company . There are no new developments on the market, with no new building since 2008. Average costs are €1,921 €/m2 to buy and 26 €/m2/month to rent, according to figures from Urban Data Analytics, reported in the Spanish daily El Mundo.

BEST BUDGETS MELT AWAY WITH BREXIT

The buyers with the best budgets in recent years have been British, Hernández tells me. “Until the end of last year, most of the buyers with budgets of €200,000 or more were British,” he said. “But thanks to Brexit that market has disappeared completely. British buyers with budgets of €200,000 started to dry up at the end of last year, and disappeared altogether after Brexit.”

What demand is left is mainly Spanish, from cities like Madrid, but budgets are low, in the €60,000 to €100,000 range. So demand for more expensive homes in the resort has disappeared with the British. That sounds like an opportunity for other nationalities to get a home that would have sold for €200,000 last year ( and €400,000 in the boom) for €180,000 or less now.

“There are still a few British buyers looking now,” says Hernández, “but budgets are much lower, in the €100,000 to €125,000 range, so they are just like the Spanish now.”