Cheap Spanish prices drive real estate recovery

BARCELONA, Spain - Nov. 21, 2013 - PRLog -- International property buyers in Spain are being enticed by falling house prices, and summoning up the courage to enter the house market again, which in turn is spurring a more widespread recovery in the Spanish house market, according to Fotocasa.es.

Six regions in Spain avoided drops in sales during the last quarter, including the Canary Islands, Catalonia, Murcia, Valencia, Andalusia and La Rioja, Fotocasa.es found. The first five regions saw rises in sales of 16.2%, 12.1%, 9.5%, 3% and 0.1% respectively. La Rioja remained stable.

What Fotocasa.es noted was that these are largely the areas where Spanish property prices fell the most over the last year. This seemed to point towards the fact that in the current context of tightening credit and Spain’s struggle to overcome the aftereffects of a long-term recession, the only way right now to get rid of the large housing stock that exists in Spain is to lower the price.

Mortgage specialist Conti recently revealed that among UK buyers Spain is now the second most preferred destination, behind France, but the gap between the two nations continues to shrink. Furthermore, Spain accounted for more enquiries than France during May, June and July of this year. According to Conti, this indicates that confidence is increasing and investors are in a strong position when buying in the country.

Due to the number of homes available, international property buyers have found that it is possible to negotiate an even lower price than advertised with motivated sellers.

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