The Bank of Spain announced on Thursday that it had approved the capital-raising plans presented by 13 banks and savings banks, known as cajas, including a 2.8-billion-euro application for state funding from the troubled Caja Mediterraneo (CAM). In a statement, the central bank said that nine financial entities may need to tap into money from the FROB bank restructuring fund. Four have agreed to seek  [ Read More ]

It will take a long time for the real estate market in southern Spain to recover from the bursting of the bubble, although the good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Developers and estate agents are now optimistically clinging to a lifeline that has come from abroad. The storm of the financial crisis has relented for the British, Germans, Scandinavians or Russians who are  [ Read More ]

The Spanish property market grew by 16% in February compared to the same month last year, according to the latest figures to be published by the country’s National Institute of Statistics. Not including social housing, there were 35,720 home sales in February, 21,368 of them newly built and 19,665 resales. According to analysts the market has touched bottom and is starting to recover after two years of decline but the  [ Read More ]

Spain’s property market is “dropping fast”: ‘ Property fairs tout discounts of as much as 60% on new-built homes, or even “buy one, get one free” offers. “All the statistics show a fall,” concedes the housing minister, Beatriz Corredor. Yet pinning down just how big a fall is tricky. Tax-shy Spaniards do not always declare the true selling prices. the government’s main index, based on valuers’ estimates, shows a 1.3%  [ Read More ]

Property sales in Spain have shot up by 20% according to the latest report from Spain’s ultra conservative National Institute of Statistics (INE). They have revealed the first double digit growth in Spanish property sales for three years. Sales increased by 20% in February after a marginal 2% in January, a great boost for Spain’s main engine of economic growth. As 60% of the sales were in second hand properties,  [ Read More ]

Chris Bryant, the Minister for Europe, was speaking last week during a visit to south-eastern Spain to meet British expatriates who have been told that their homes will be bulldozed after Spanish authorities declared their construction illegal, said that the country was undermining efforts to create a recovery in its beleaguered housing market. Mr Bryant warned that: “The housing market in Spain is not going to recover quickly if pictures  [ Read More ]

When the first signs of the international financial crisis emerged in the second half of 2007 the Spanish property market had already been in a steady decline for a while. Not surprising, if you consider that almost a decade of feverish growth had led to a textbook case of an overheated market in which builders, buyers, sellers, investors and banks alike became accustomed to the kind of volumes that had  [ Read More ]

There was a small uptick in Spanish housing sales during the fourth quarter of last year, according to recent data released by the Spanish Ministry of Housing. The increase was small, but enough for the Government to get excited about: “The transactions in the fourth quarter represent a rise of 4.1% with respect to the same period last year, this being the first year-on-year rise since the fourth quarter of  [ Read More ]

The average house price in Spain shows an overvaluation of 20 percent, concludes a study by the Institute Juan de Mariana. This institution calculated the relationship between the sale price of real estate (2558 euros per square meter to December 2009) and rental price (95.6 euros per square meters per year). This ratio fell from 32.2 in 2007 to 28.9 in 2008 and 23.6 in 2009, but the institute says  [ Read More ]

Spain’s property woes and economic downturn finally may be catching up with the country’s two largest banks, Banco Santander and BBVA, the WSJ reports. The big banks have remained profitable throughout the financial crisis despite the bursting of the housing bubble in Spain, high unemployment and other problems, the paper notes. One reason: the government’s strict requirements for Spanish banks to maintain high reserves against bad loans, in part a  [ Read More ]