Real Estate Slowdown in Spain, Half of Agents Close Shop : The Real Estate Bloggers

Real Estate Slowdown in Spain, Half of Agents Close Shop

January 31st, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

SpanishrealestateWe are so focused on how the real estate is affecting us in the United States we forget the credit crunch is hitting the rest of the world too. Raising the Roof, the excellent real estate blog of the International Herald Tribune, has this interesting post on real estate agents in Spain. It seems that the slowdown is so extreme over half the agents in the country have been fired or quit.

Now that is a real estate slowdown.

This has the ring of urban myth, but the number is so huge it seems worth repeating: API, the trade association for Spanish property agents, is reporting that 40,000 estate agents—half the estate agents in the country—closed down last year, in the wake of the slowdown in the market. As a result, it is believed that as many as 100,000 property agents lost their jobs last year. via the International Herald Tribune

Tags:

Other Posts You May Be Interested In:



Previous Post: FBI Investigating 14 Subprime Companies? Smokescreen or Crackdown? | Next Post: Tribune Sells Original Warner Brothers Studio To Hudson Capital



 

If you enjoyed this post, we can deliver daily content from the Real Estate Bloggers.

Subscribe using your RSS Reader

Or Get Updates Delivered Daily By E-Mail:


There Are 3 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Mark Harrison on 31 January 2008:

    There’s little doubt that Spanish property was massively overpriced compared to historical norms, but the fall was happening BEFORE the credit crunch spillover.

    Since the end of the Second World War, average property prices in Eurpope have cycled between about 3x and 5x average incomes.

    Current UK prices - 7x average incomes
    Current Spanish prices - 14x average incomes

    Our take is that it was purchasers from elsewhere in Europe, particularly the Boomer generation in UK and Germany, that had driven up prices, buying second homes in Spain as retirement properties. (Think of the South Coast of Spain as Europe’s Florida.)

    We see a couple of key issues caught Spanish market hard over the last 12 months:

    1: Germany signed a “tax information treaty” with Spain. That means that the German Government now get information about German owners of property in Spain direct from the Spanish Government - and Germany taxes that kind of thing :-)

    2: The accession of other countries, particularly Cyprus to the EU, has meant that there is a lot more competition for retirement homes PLUS Cyprus has a property law system modeled on the British one, so works the way UK buyers would expect.

    Example difference: In the UK, like the US, when you die, you choose who you leave your house to. In Spain, you have no such choice. Spanish Law mandates the split between your surviving spouse and your children. The UK boomers are beginning to realise this, and thinking that maybe Spain isn’t so great a place for Intergenerational Wealth Transfer.

  2. Comment by West End Estate Agents on 21 February 2008:

    It’s not easy

  3. Comment by Emma Haller on 2 July 2008:

    The Spanish government are not making any incentives for people to buy properties.
    Currently no one could afford the incredible fees involved in both buying and selling.
    greed is a huge factor in the spanish property market.
    Think like a citizen and not about profit and you will find that there is a happy compromise that can be made.

Post a Response