Spain hits rock bottom – but the only way is up

[Janet]

There are people who are buying now that properties can be bought for 25% of previous asking prices, and this last month is the best in the Canaries, for one area, for several years.

[Perikles]

This seems as good a place as any to post this interesting article. A report that out of nowhere, large numbers of foreigners or foreign investment entities are starting to buy up property in Spain. They don't really know how to interpret this at the moment.

[Janet]

They can't interpret it? That the banks have been instructed, as part of their bailout, to get rid of the repossessions and unsold offplans on their books, even if means effectively giving them away ...

How can anyone fail to interpret that?

I think this thread was exactly the appropriate one to post that in because it does show that if things are cheap enough, or the will to offload is great enough, property will move. My only concern is that as the improvement begins, corruption and stupidity don't rear their ugly heads again, and fuel another boom that will blow the country's economy into smithereens.

[poker]

foreign investment entities that could have connections with the banks ........

Seems like a never ending story .......

You need real peaple to live or use more than 1 million wrong built homes if you really want to solve it .

[Guanche]

Now I'm not sure where I read it or who wrote it, I think it was a forum member on another forum so I apologies if I get it wrong.
This sounds like the UK high street problem. Big investors buy property and over time inflate the price. This allows them to borrow or do other things backed up by a large portfolio of properties. But its a house of cards. The properties have to be kept unsold and unlet, unless some idiot wishes to buy or rent at the inflated price!
Is this going to happen in Spain? Thousands of empty properties bought cheap by foreign investors, who on the books inflate the prices, but keep them empty, unsold and unlet?
A house of cards in the making?

[poker]

A lot of the prices have come a lot down but if you look at the local waiges it seems still property prices are inflated .

It can't change a lot as long as there is the same euro money all over Europe .

Like Guanche says new crisis in the making . . . . Could be in another 10 years or could be sooner , who knows .
In futer less peaple form the middle class ----> less money ---> les property buying or selling .

[Janet]

Poker'd better not read THIS  ... 

While the rest of the regions saw an overall average drop of 17% in sales compared to the previous year (the figure for Asturias being a massive 37% down), the islands posted an increase of nearly 2%, continuing the upward trend recorded in 2012, according to the latest government figures. Among the interesting facts to emerge from the newly-released statistics, it has emerged that foreign buyers accounted for a full 36% of all property sales in the Canaries last year, twice the figure seen in Spain as a whole. Despite the welcome improvement, which experts attribute to the current attractive prices and growing confidence in an economic recovery here, property sales remain well below the pre-recession levels and are 39% down on 2008.

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

Flipping that around, it means that 64% of buyers are Spanish.  And we tend to think there is no money around, but clearly there is.

[Guanche]

I think there's loads of money around. The problem is that its all in the Mattress Bank and with money laundering laws its very difficult for it to find its way to the housing market.

[Perikles]

I think there's loads of money around. The problem is that its all in the Mattress Bank and with money laundering laws its very difficult for it to find its way to the housing market.

Yes, there are now strict and small limits on how much actual cash can be paid at notary for the purchase of a property.