Tom Powell
ANDALUCIA saw the highest value of property sales in Spain last year.
The region saw a combined total of sales reach €6,972 million in 2013, the highest of any of the country’s regions.
According to official data, it beat Catalunya with €6,765 million and Madrid with €6,530 million, as well as Valencia with €4,986 million.
The total number of sales in Spain however, dropped for the third consecutive year, with the total number of sales reaching €38,016 million – a fall of 20.4% on the 2012 total of €47,782 million.
The private housing market peaked in 2006 with a total of €158,682 million, but has falled by 76% since then.
The Ministry of Development’s findings reveal that 285,136 private housing transactions were carried out in total in 2013, a 12.8% decrease on the year before.
The regions with the lowest recorded movement were Ceuta and Melilla, with €76 million between them, La Rioja with €217 million, Extremadura with €381 million, and Cantabria with €412 million.
Be interesting to see how many of those were illegal or irregular.
These figures are still low and are not indicative of a sustained recovery to the property market. There is a massive oversupply and low demand and there is still age old problem of so called “illegal” properties. The authorities, particularly the Junta de Andalucia, just sit on their backsides and instead of taking action to stimulate the property market they make it even worse by continuing with their program of revoking building licences with subsequent demolition orders. This has a ripple effect which negatively impacts the entire Spanish property market and does not inspire investor confidence.
With all the empty properties in Spain, why not make it attractive to investors? How about offering tax incentives like no CGT for the first 10 years or reducing purchase taxes?
When a property is placed on the market at the right price, it should sell within six months but until that happens, it is not a functioning, workable property market.
The way to make property investments attractive to buyers is to price them at attractive prices. Although we read all the time about how. much prices have fallen from the peak, the problem is we are comparing with highs that were so ridiculous. Even now, with the falls, in many cases people still cant see that. In times like these, governments have better things to do with their funds than help out property owners
Houses are priced attractively David at the moment surely? People ARE buying them more lately.
Although if you say anything positive on here it angers some people (Fred, Stuart etc. – ‘the gang’ to avoid like plague)
Houses have not been “priced attractively”; the value of such properties has totally collapsed because the whole sector has disintigrated, mainly due to over-supply. Derek, you seem to get frustrated whenever someone tells you the reality of Spain. Anyway, Portugal is a vastly better bet at the moment; they have much more attractive benefits for foreign purchasers and they also have a property register that is, unlike Spain, accurate.
Move to Portugal then please Fred.
Well that’s your answer to everything Derek isn’t it? Yet another pathetic response that we’ve really come to expect from you, and which can safely be ignored.