Bank-owned property boosts sales in Spain's Costas
By Sue Brown, 10 May 2010
A first quarter surge of nearly 10% helped Spanish housing sales consolidate the rebound since the beginning of the year. February, when sales grew by 18.7%, was the highest increase recorded in the last two years.
The increased housing sales in March compared to the same month last year, provided a total of 37 561 transactions, of which 48.9% were made on new homes and 51.1% on second-hand properties, as revealed by the Statistics on Transfer of Property Rights published today by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).
This better performance has been possible thanks to an increase of 25.1% in resales (19,212 deals), as new building transactions decreased 4% (18,349). Sales of homes surged in March for the third consecutive month.
Last year ended with a decline in the sale of homes of 24.9% over 2008, a total of 414,811 and about a quarter fewer than peak year 2007 when sale topped 650,000. From February, homes sales fell by 8.5% versus 7.1% rise the previous month. Sales in March were 37,561 and overall in the first three months of the year there was a rise of 9.7% over the same period 2009.
57.3% of sale’s were recorded in the three main second home “Costa” regions of Andalusia, Valencia and Catalonia plus capital Madrid which is being transformed by its new administration.
Spanish bank repossessions sales have been a big booster for resale deals, but many developers have been lowering prices to turn key ready apartments and villas into cash.
Specialist brokers, PropertyInSpain.Net have 1,000s of buyers from across Northern Europe registered for these properties, some of which carry 50% discounts on previous prices or valuations.
Property manager, Mar Walcott said: ”These excellent prices are matched by 80% or 90% mortgage offers because to the loan to value rate is so good on bank-owned property at the moment.
“The most interest is in Costa Blanca and Ibiza where we have 100s of great deals on Spanish bank repossessions and key ready homes from troubled developers.”