Mark, I asked this question a while back. I guess they don’t have any official records of sold prices?! This is why prices in Spain are so pie in the sky. Someone blinded by rose tinted glasses could pay thousands more than a local.
Here in Ireland they’ve now got a website and very interesting to see the prices people really paid rather than what they had said they’d paid down the pub 😉
It would make so much sense for the notary to be linked to the catastral/town hall so when someone buys a property the details could immediately be updated for rubbish and IBI bills etc.
I think they keep the records, they just don’t make them public. In fact when we bought our current flat I remember seeing a figure for what the previous owners had paid for it somewhere (I can’t remember on which piece of paper though). Also someone told me you could pay the council or land registry to give you the figure for a particular flat. However given the official price paid has traditionally born little resemblance to the actual price paid, I can see why they may not bother making any of the figures public.
There is also the fact that the actual records, even if they were available, are bound to be flawed. There has been a long tradition of part over, part under the table payment for property in Spain.
Whilst I understand the practice is less common now, I’m sure it still exists. Also if a property is sold now, how do you accurately compare its sale price to that which was registered 5/10 years ago? Simple anser is that you can’t. This will distort any figures for a long time to come.
At my limited level, I follow the Tinsa index, it seems about right to me.
I’ll say this though, at my purely local level, using my own eyes, I’m witnessing a vast change from even a couple of years ago. The prices where I live, in the Alicante province, have stopped dropping. The property market has started moving again.
I was reminded of it when I walked my dog a couple of hours ago. A car was reversing out of a recently sold house, a BMW with French number plates. Just around the corner the Spanish builders were just starting to arrive to continue their work on another recently sold house, with a Mercedes on French number plates in the driveway.
Two houses sold to French people within a couple of streets to where I live is hardly going to signal a major change in the property market, but there’s more. My estate agent pal, running a major chain from his nearby office, is running out of houses to sell. He doesn’t trust his staff and takes his clients to the notary office himself.
He’s in and out of their offices like a yo yo, most days of the week. A couple of years ago, he would go to the notary perhaps once a fortnight.
I’m running out of ink, but I’ve got to mention the house on the corner, sold by Spanish people to Spanish people. I know both the seller and buyer, ordinary folk leading ordinary lives. Just like me.
Because the number of properties that are being offered for sale continues to increase and the demand fall.
I used to post the fotocasa stats on this site a few years ago, but they changed the format of the site which meant that my historical data was no longer valid for comparison purposes. However, month after month the numbers would simply keep on increasing. It’s my belief that only in the last year have the Spanish truly realised their economic situation. People with second (third and fourth) properties that thought they could hang on to now realise they can’t and are now trying to get rid of them (at any cost)
Then we have the mass exodus of people from Spain. Young Spaniards leaving for a better future, immigrants returning home to Latin America, ex-pats trying to sell-up, property investors long gone and new Spanish tax laws to dis-encourage future retirees wanting to own a property in Spain.
AND…. we still have new complexes across Spain being completed (albeit in a slow time) as developers realise that unless the shell is finished they have no chance or recovering some costs.
So in actual fact supply is still increasing and demand has dropped off a knife edge.
At this point in time there has never been more houses in the history of Spain looking for a new owner. And that is why your comment was ridiculous.
Thank you for your explanation. I can only speak for the small part of the Alicante province I have a good knowledge of, not the rest of Spain. And as I said, two years ago my friend was only selling a few houses, just ticking over.
From about last autumn, that all changed, and his marketing and other estate agent skills remained the same. His explanation, and mine is that buyers are returning to the market in our area in great numbers.
He may also be helped by his reputation. He does not deal with repossessions, or new builds (not that I can think of any around here), or houses on unfinished urbanisations, or illegal properties; he turns away sellers if there is even a sniff of illegality about their property.
And lastly, there is a great demand for properties from Scandinavian buyers whose country folk are already here, but he will sell to anyone who comes up with the money. He has now added the Russian and Chinese flags to his showrooms and it seems to pay off.
And he is running out of properties to sell and is advertising to increase his stock.
I don’t doubt the fact that there may have been a upturn in buyers. Some private sellers are offering properties down 70% from peak, which IMO will be the bottom (or very near) of the market.
But the recovery will be a long way off and there is a huge glut of properties measured in the millions that needs to be shifted. This is going to take a decade or more.
Richard, here is the link again written by Mark at the end of November re his estimation of how long it will take to clear the glut of properties in Spain.
If the total figure is near 2 million, as usual, figures in Spain don’t seem to be recorded properly as with the topic title then 10 -20 years is not unrealistic IMO. The article goes on say that new homes will become old homes and almost impossible to sell 🙄
The price the former owner paid for the piso we purchased was listed in a document, but I can’t remember which one. After I finish my working on my taxes, I search it out.
The price the former owner paid for the piso we purchased was listed in a document, but I can’t remember which one. After I finish my working on my taxes, I search it out.
yup – that’s what I was referring to in my previous post – I definitely remember seeing previous transaction prices for my flat on some document. The people who sold the flat to us bought it in the 80s and it was a real shock to see what they had paid. Less than €20k I think, and there were us buying it from them for €330k! Many sellers who bought back in the 80s must be able to slash the prices of their flats and still make a decent profit.
Surely it has to be a step in the right direction if Spain produces an accurate ‘sold price’ register that can be accessed by people as happens in the UK. In the UK, private sold prices appear in 3 months on the Land Registry at which time Zoopla, Rightmove, Net House Prices etc can then list them too. Strangely though, I don’t think property bought by Companies show on that list, hence multi million pound properties are often bought in Company/Trusts names 🙄
I remember previous recessions both in the UK and Spain and was surprised in each case when they suddenly ended, without any obvious reasons, and most of the experts had missed the bottom of the market. I think it will happen again, in both countries, although the current downturn has been a lengthy one.
I’m not an expert on either country, but it seems that London and the South East are recovering much faster than, say, parts of Yorkshire.
Spain is an even bigger country, with even more regional differences, so who knows. The only certainty is that when the upturn comes, most of us will miss it. I’m bound to.
On my coffee walk earlier, I noticed activity in two separate estate agents offices, but my pal was missing again, he was back at the notary’s.
Surely it has to be a step in the right direction if Spain produces an accurate ‘sold price’ register that can be accessed by people as happens in the UK. In the UK, private sold prices appear in 3 months on the Land Registry at which time Zoopla, Rightmove, Net House Prices etc can then list them too. Strangely though, I don’t think property bought by Companies show on that list, hence multi million pound properties are often bought in Company/Trusts names 🙄
The problem is that the “sold” prices aren’t really the sold prices. So while figures are there, nobody would really believe them anyway. A better option might be to start publishing figures from now on, so in the future people know what has been paid and people might be less inclined to use dinero “b” if anyone can look up what they said they paid for a property. A big part of the problem in Spain is that nobody knows what the market price for properties are – sellers ask too much, buyers don’t kmnow what to offer – publishing previous prices would help overcome this.
As I can’t find it in the online version of the Costa Blanca News, here is what it says on page 15 of the paper version today, under the headline Property Sales Rise.
‘Data released from the General Council of Notaries on property purchases in 2012 . . .
Sales to foreign buyers increased by 31% with the number of Russian purchasers up 27%, Britons 24%, and Scandinavian buyers up by a massive 311% . . .’
The Spanish property market has been contorted for years by all sorts of people with all sorts of agenda, but the General Council of Notaries has got to be a most reliable source.
en enero se vendieron 12.847 viviendas, un 26,8% menos que el año pasado, el mayor descenso desde diciembre de 2011, según el consejo general del notariado. tanto la compraventa, como el precio de la vivienda o la concesión de hipotecas cerraron enero en mínimos históricos. recordemos que este organismo es el que cuenta con los datos más frescos al obtenerse de las escrituras de compra ante notario
Being a stubborn person by nature, I’m going to return to the data from the National Council of Notaries, briefly.
Ignoring the data for Scandinavians, there has been an increase of British buyers by 24%. Translated for my area, the province of Alicante, which already has some 250,000 British expats, that has to be an amazing statistic.
Despite the demolition of a British expat property, lights being switched off for fellow Brits, a diabolical land grab and a hundred other horror stories, they keep coming.
I’m coming to the conclusion ( happily) that the bottom has been reached. Even Sir Mervyn King (I’m mentioning his full title, for once) has said in his final month in office that the pound Sterling has fallen as low as it’s going to fall. I hate him for his 375 billion quantitative easing and talking the pound down for the past seven years.
If it wasn’t for the ‘foreign assets’ nonsense, I would be a happy bunny.
I’m not one for panicking, but I just briefly mentioned to my wife earlier that East Anglia wouldn’t be a bad place to live, and she was rude to me, dead rude. She swore.
She’s lived in Spain for most of her life, although she’s English born.
I tried to explain about foreign assets, the flat in London, the bank accounts, etc and she swore again, in Spanish this time.
I’m giving up to surrender to Absolute, so smooth you don’t realise you’re pissed until it’s too late.
I’m not one for panicking, but I just briefly mentioned to my wife earlier that East Anglia wouldn’t be a bad place to live, and she was rude to me, dead rude. She swore.
Being a stubborn person by nature, I’m going to return to the data from the National Council of Notaries, briefly.
Ignoring the data for Scandinavians, there has been an increase of British buyers by 24%. Translated for my area, the province of Alicante, which already has some 250,000 British expats, that has to be an amazing statistic.
Despite the demolition of a British expat property, lights being switched off for fellow Brits, a diabolical land grab and a hundred other horror stories, they keep coming.
I’m coming to the conclusion ( happily) that the bottom has been reached. Even Sir Mervyn King (I’m mentioning his full title, for once) has said in his final month in office that the pound Sterling has fallen as low as it’s going to fall. I hate him for his 375 billion quantitative easing and talking the pound down for the past seven years.
If it wasn’t for the ‘foreign assets’ nonsense, I would be a happy bunny.
An increase of British buyers, although welcome, may not be that significant if few properties are being sold. It might be that last year 25 properties were sold while this year 31 properties were sold. Personally I get the impression sales are increasing simply because I have a list of “favourite” properties on Idealista and this year there is a steady trickle of properties disappearing from that list. Perhaps people are giving up and either taking them off the market or selling them at any price, having failed to sell before the “fiscal deadline” last year.
Either way, as a potential buyer there’s no rush. Any recovery will take years to establish itself. I’m keeping my eye on equities this year.
I’m not one for panicking, but I just briefly mentioned to my wife earlier that East Anglia wouldn’t be a bad place to live, and she was rude to me, dead rude. She swore.
….
You’re not married to Katie are you?
Good God, no. I don’t want my wife to be gallivanting around on golf courses and swanning around on cruises, I want her at home to hold my hand on those dark nights when the demons are about, and to clean up when the little dog has a senior moment in the kitchen.
Mind you, my one is getting a bit uppity. She got three letters from the Spanish authorities this week, all asking for money. It wasn’t for big amounts but she noticed.
‘Why is the car in my name? And the insurance? And the . . . .?
All those questions, it wasn’t as though I had asked to take my speeding points. Silly moo.
I’m not one for panicking, but I just briefly mentioned to my wife earlier that East Anglia wouldn’t be a bad place to live, and she was rude to me, dead rude. She swore.
She’s lived in Spain for most of her life, although she’s English born.
I tried to explain about foreign assets, the flat in London, the bank accounts, etc and she swore again, in Spanish this time.
I’m giving up to surrender to Absolute, so smooth you don’t realise you’re pissed until it’s too late.
The winter here in blighty doesn’t show any sign of easing – in fact we’re promised snow again by mid-week. So I’m getting tempted by the idea of renting a place in your Costa, Rocker. (not the area where I’d choose to buy, but you never know).
You’ve mentioned much about the area, the mix of Spanish and foreigners etc. But can you tell us if there are live music bars around, that stay open through the year and not close by October?
And are rental prices staying low – I assume they are?
But you sound like a city boy and I would recommend Alicante City itself. The local Spanish papers are full of rentals, thousands of them, but you’re better off in the area between the British Consulate and the seafront, it’s safer and posher. You won’t find many Brits in the City itself.
The expat areas to the south are full of music bars and everything else. You can dance the night away in most places.
But the recovery will be a long way off and there is a huge glut of properties measured in the millions that needs to be shifted. This is going to take a decade or more.
I was reading quite a detailed analysis on this quite recently that crunched a lot of numbers and financially modeled the situation. The upshot was, it will probably take between 20-40 years for the property market in Spain to recover and for all the unsold properties to be shifted.
But you sound like a city boy and I would recommend Alicante City itself. The local Spanish papers are full of rentals, thousands of them, but you’re better off in the area between the British Consulate and the seafront, it’s safer and posher. You won’t find many Brits in the City itself.
The expat areas to the south are full of music bars and everything else. You can dance the night away in most places.
I’ve never seen easybuy before. The branding reminds me of something. I can’t quite put my finger on it…… 😉
But you sound like a city boy and I would recommend Alicante City itself. The local Spanish papers are full of rentals, thousands of them, but you’re better off in the area between the British Consulate and the seafront, it’s safer and posher. You won’t find many Brits in the City itself.
The expat areas to the south are full of music bars and everything else. You can dance the night away in most places.
I’ve never seen easybuy before. The branding reminds me of something. I can’t quite put my finger on it…… 😉
Easyjet are continually suing companies for diluting their brand like this. Personally I don’t know why people bother – it makes their website look like some Bangkok street hawker trying to flog imitation Rolexes (“Same, same …. but different”). It can’t be that hard to think of an original name for a website surely?
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