[Anonymous]

Sareb, the Banco Malo, has now declared that it intends to keep the million plus empty and repossessed properties off the market for at least three to four years. It should stop the price falls and create an artificial shortage of available properties, provided the demand remains the same or even increases.

The policy should stabilise prices in the short term and lead to an increase in the medium term.

Or they’ve just kicked the can further down a rocky road.

[Anonymous]

I think they have kicked the can. Surely if they wanted to mantain some sanity in the market permission to build should not have been granted in the first place.

[Anonymous]

@Rocker wrote:

Sareb, the Banco Malo, has now declared that it intends to keep the million plus empty and repossessed properties off the market for at least three to four years. It should stop the price falls and create an artificial shortage of available properties, provided the demand remains the same or even increases.

The policy should stabilise prices in the short term and lead to an increase in the medium term.

Or they’ve just kicked the can further down a rocky road.

This is totally insane. Property prices are bound to be lower in three to four years time compared to what they are now which means that the bank will get even less money in selling their repossessed properties than they would if they tried to offload them now. The bank is clearly trying to manipulate the market by reducing supply but in the long term it cannot possibly work since when they do eventually get around to selling these properties in three to four year time the influx of repossessed properties onto the market will only depress the market further just at the time when everybody will be trying to offload their properties in Spain just before Spain drops out of the Euro and adopts the Peseta.

The bank would be better off taking advantage of the current lull in the flood of bad news stories concerning Europe and offload their repossessed stock now rather than wait in the hope that the market may have improved in three to four years time which is unlikely to happen. The bank is clearly sticking its head in the sand on this one and no amount of market manipulation is going to save the Spanish property market in the long term!

Lets face it. Spain has had a phoney economy since it joined the Euro which fueled the housing boom and Spain will continue to have a phoney economy as long as it remains in the Euro and Spain will only a proper functioning real economy once it drops out of the Euro and adopts the Peseta.

My advise to people out there who want to buy a home in Spain is wait until Spain drops out of the Euro before buying anything in Spain! Spain cannot stay in the Euro because the currency is too strong and what Spain needs is a weaker currency like the Peseta. The Euro represents the industrial strength of Germany and the Euro currency was always inappropriate for Spain.

[Chopera]

If nobody is buying then there is no point wasting money on marketing them. I suspect that in 4 years time they’ll just kick the can again

[zenkarma]

@jakesuper wrote:

Lets face it. Spain has had a phoney economy since it joined the Euro which fueled the housing boom and Spain will continue to have a phoney economy as long as it remains in the Euro and Spain will only a proper functioning real economy once it drops out of the Euro and adopts the Peseta..

That’s not true at all. Spain had been steadily reducing her budget deficit and in 2005 actually produced a surplus. Same in 2006 and 2007 which was the result of a solid underlying economy.

However once the global banking crisis hit in 2007/08 which left Spain’s banks exposed to huge losses, the budget deficit went from a surplus to a large deficit. Spain’s GDP was growing at a healthy 4% a year up to 2007 and now it’s plummeted into negative growth.

There is still nothing fundamentally wrong with Spain’s economy. If you strip out the property market, which is where Spain’s biggest problems come from, essentially because they’re run by greedy and corrupt officials, their exports are still strong – despite the strength of the Euro.

All these charts disagree with you.

[Anonymous]

@zenkarma. Spanish surplus was from the sales of properties & the taxes collocted from these sales. in so far as the growth of 4%. You have to also accept that Spanish economy was coming out years of neglect and developing from a very low base.

Further there were a lot of capital projects e.g high speed trains, road net work, etc. Any economy that is dragged out of wilderness show that kind of year on year growth but cannot sustain this forever. Poland in Europe & India, Brazil is a good example.

[zenkarma]

@shakeel wrote:

@zenkarma. Spanish surplus was from the sales of properties & the taxes collocted from these sales. in so far as the growth of 4%.

Certainly the surplus was a result of property, I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. You can’t have a massive housing boom and not make lots of tax money.

However, see the export graph? Spanish exports are continuing to rise and that has nothing to do with property or the strength of the euro.

The underlying Spanish economy is reasonably healthy, the unemployment and debt is all down to the collapsed property market, which as I suggested elsewhere and will say again here, is down to their own stupidity, greed and mismanagement. They built far too many properties, too quickly because it was easy money, they didn’t see the global crashing coming and got caught with their pants down. They have no-one to blame but themselves.

Pineapple man was suggesting it was all down to the strength of the euro – nonsense.

[Anonymous]

@Zenkarma: I am glad that we agree on the taxes collected. Comparing the grapgh with Hungry is not going to convince me and many others.

Spain always had high unemployment. Even during the construction boom the unemplyment was between 10-15%. No body can confirm either way as the authencity of any kind of statistics in Spain cannot be taken seriously for decsion making. In addition in my book the people who were working on temporary contract were effectively unemployed, as they could not commit themselves to anything which could provide some kind of security e.g buying a home, car etc and could be thrown on the heap at the whim of a unpleasent, arrogant & incompetant boss.

The high Spanish employment as I had posted counteless time is mainly down to high social security cost, employment laws, unions and the civil servents who are an obsticle & not to mention the nepotism, corruption. The fact that Spanish underground economy is 20% speaks volume. Here I do not mean a postman moonlighting as gardner, pool cleaner etc.

A country of 55 million cannot depend on one sector of the economy. The goods that Spain produces are of inferior quality e.g ” Asparina” is such poor quality that one has to take half dozen where as if one gets an ” Aspaina ” in Germany, France, UK, Holland, Austria one will do the job.

Further, Spain does not produce anything which other countries do not produce and at half the Spanish price.

[zenkarma]

@shakeel wrote:

Comparing the grapgh with Hungry is not going to convince me and many others.

Ignore the Hungary part, that’s just something the website it came from was comparing.

@shakeel wrote:

Further, Spain does not produce anything which other countries do not produce and at half the Spanish price.

Agricultural products is one of Spain’s biggest exports, if the quality was inferior and the price so high – no-one would buy it. The reality is – many countries buy it, that’s why their exports are healthy.

Also, I’m not really trying to convince anyone, I’m happy for people to form their own conclusions.

[Anonymous]

Agricultural products they are amongst the best in this area of the world when it comes to taste but what will happen when the EU removes their money from Spain Italy and France to give it to poorer nations? The whole agricultural sector in both the eu and the us is so messed up thats its impossible to know if they can compete on a free market. In our supermarkets there has been a huge influx of oranges and other produces from moroco. Open the borders and see what happens. Spain have also boosted their competiveness by employing illegals which hardly is the case in holland for example.

[Anonymous]

@zenkarma wrote:

That’s not true at all. Spain had been steadily reducing her budget deficit and in 2005 actually produced a surplus. Same in 2006 and 2007 which was the result of a solid underlying economy.

However once the global banking crisis hit in 2007/08 which left Spain’s banks exposed to huge losses, the budget deficit went from a surplus to a large deficit. Spain’s GDP was growing at a healthy 4% a year up to 2007 and now it’s plummeted into negative growth.

There is still nothing fundamentally wrong with Spain’s economy. If you strip out the property market, which is where Spain’s biggest problems come from, essentially because they’re run by greedy and corrupt officials, their exports are still strong – despite the strength of the Euro.

Spain received a considerable boost when it joined the Euro because in the run-up to joining the Euro Spain reduced interest rates and upon joining the Euro the low Euro interest rates fueled an economic, consumption and credit boom so it is not surprising that at first sight Spain appeared to be doing very well soon after joining the Euro but the boom and euphoria got completely out of control and Spain started to view itself as a first world country with all the investments made in high speed railways and infrastructure investments like motorways paid for by the EU but this simply obscured the fact that Spain is politically and structurally a completely backward country which doesn’t even have a decent postal service and is bedeviled by a cripplingly slow and corrupt judiciary and corrupt provincial governance.

The strong value of the Euro is damaging Spain’s ability to export to countries outside of the Euro zone and it would be much better for Spain if it dropped out of the Euro and adopted the Peseta because the resulting devaluation of the Peseta will be a tremendous boost to Spanish exports and Spain’s tourist industry.

I am absolutely certain that house prices in Spain will fall a further 75% from today’s prices over the next four years and I am also absolutely certain that unemployment in Spain will reach 50% from the current 26% in four years time.

[Anonymous]

Rocker, where did you read this news that Sareb plan to keep some stock of the market?

[katy]

@Ardun wrote:

Agricultural products they are amongst the best in this area of the world when it comes to taste but what will happen when the EU removes their money from Spain Italy and France to give it to poorer nations? The whole agricultural sector in both the eu and the us is so messed up thats its impossible to know if they can compete on a free market. In our supermarkets there has been a huge influx of oranges and other produces from moroco. Open the borders and see what happens. Spain have also boosted their competiveness by employing illegals which hardly is the case in holland for example.

I always look where produce I buy is from. I have noticed that hardly anything from Spain is in our local supermarkets now. Tomatoes etc. from Morocco, veg from Italy. Stuff from Israel too. perhaps spain is pricing out of the market? There were some of those massive forced GM crop supersized strawberries from Spain though!

[Fuengi (Andrew)]

@ katy

as far as i know the only GM crop found in spain is wheat. strawberrries are ‘natural’.

[katy]

The spanish ones this week are suspiciously large…huge actually 😆 Hard and pure white inside and taste of nothing.

[Anonymous]

I remember those, they are ‘fresons’ and not strawberries. They need a mountain of sugar and squirty cream to be eaten 🙂

I thought that a lot of Spanish companies now grew out in Morocco?

A cousin works for a large agri business and they have endless inspections from the Tescos/Asda etc. people. They order an enormous amount of produce one day and then can half it the next. It’s all to bash the price down. The produce is picked early and tasteless to ripen in time to hit the shelves so therefore there is very little taste to the tomatoes etc. Very sad. Also, they are growing things so fast that the soil is being leeched of all goodness so they are using more and more chemicals. I guess that could explain why a lot of Spanish companies now grow in Morocco?

They do also pay peanuts to those who pick (usually all African, Moroccan, Ecudorian immigrants) so if they had to pay a real minimum wage I guess the price would rocket?

[Anonymous]

@mark wrote:

Rocker, where did you read this news that Sareb plan to keep some stock of the market?

I saw it on the Spanish news yesterday morning, either on the 24-hour channel or Antena 3. It was quite a lengthy piece.

[Anonymous]

@zenkarma wrote:

@shakeel wrote:

@zenkarma. Spanish surplus was from the sales of properties & the taxes collocted from these sales. in so far as the growth of 4%.

Certainly the surplus was a result of property, I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. You can’t have a massive housing boom and not make lots of tax money.

However, see the export graph? Spanish exports are continuing to rise and that has nothing to do with property or the strength of the euro.

The underlying Spanish economy is reasonably healthy, the unemployment and debt is all down to the collapsed property market, which as I suggested elsewhere and will say again here, is down to their own stupidity, greed and mismanagement. They built far too many properties, too quickly because it was easy money, they didn’t see the global crashing coming and got caught with their pants down. They have no-one to blame but themselves.

Pineapple man was suggesting it was all down to the strength of the euro – nonsense.

Spain’s biggest export is young people looking for work who are hoping to live in a country that is free of corruption and sky-high house prices.

Spain can boost exports by sending all their horses and donkeys to Britain to be used in burgers and captain Jap’s Eye products.

[Anonymous]

So, UK has no corruption & sky high prices.

[Anonymous]

Any recovery that may occur in the Spanish economy will be phoney based on the European Central bank giving virtual unlimited support to buying Spanish Government debt but when the stimulus and continual injections of money created out of thin air finally dries up when inflation begins to rise then Spain will no longer have anybody to bail it out and it will have to live within its means and the only way it can do that is by dropping out of the Euro and adopting a much weaker currency, the Peseta, that reflects the appalling state of the Spanish economy.

[Author]

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