Signs of property market recovery state El Mundo
An article in ‘El Mundo’, one of Spain’s leading news papers, suggests there may be signs of recovery in the Spanish property market, in one of the first positive articles on the outlook for the market since the crisis began.
“It appears to be the beginning of the end of the worst period for property sales since the crisis began,” says the article.
Pointing to encouraging signs that real estate markets may have bottomed out in the US, the UK, and France, the article suggests that Spain may be part of the trend.
The optimism also comes from a new report by Gonzalo Bernardos, a property market expert and professor of economics at the University of Barcelona, who argues that Spanish property market will come back to life this year, after a dismal 2008.
“There are five key reasons for saying that there will be more home sales in 2009 than there were in 2008,” writes Bernardos in his report. “Interest rates are lower; house prices have fallen back to their 2003 levels; banks are lending more; investors are coming back; and many people who were thinking of renting have decided to buy.”
Demand for housing is tempered by the cost of mortgage borrowing. With interest rates declining, Bernardos expects sales to pick up.
“There is a fundamental variable,” explains Bernardos. “People buy homes in response to mortgage costs, which have gone from rates of 6.25% in September to 3.25% today. We are talking, in general terms, of a fall in mortgage repayments of 40%.”
There is, however, a flaw in this argument, which the article in El Mundo does not pick up. Euribor – the base rate normally used to calculate mortgage rates in Spain – may have fallen rapidly to historic lows, but the average interest rate charged on new mortgages is actually rising, and credit terms getting tighter, making it more expensive for new borrowers to buy homes. Falling Spanish mortgage rates are only benefiting existing borrowers, who already have a home.
Another positive sign, says the article, is that housing starts picked up in the last quarter of 2008, rising by 7% compared to the previous quarter.
The recovery is already underway, suggests Bernardos, who says that, so far this year “sales have been between 25% and 40% higher than in the same period last year.”
Think Positive
So the market bottomed out in 2008, goes the argument, when house sales fell by 28.8% (13% for new builds and 41% for resales) whilst property prices fell by 5.4%, all according to official figures. On the question of prices, Bernardos doesn’t believe the official figures. “The fall in prices hasn’t been less than 20%, and in some places much more,” says Bernardos.
Another real estate expert cited in the article say that sales rates at new developments have picked up significantly. “In many developments they have sold more in the first quarter of 2009 than in the whole of 2008,” he says, also arguing that “prices have already bottomed out.”
“Banks didn’t know where the bottom was, now they do and they are giving 80% mortgages because the feel the market has bottomed out,” he goes on, whilst also warning that “nobody should expect bargains at 50% discounts. That’s not going to happen.”
Whilst Bernardos expects the market to return to life this year, that doesn’t mean he expects prices to start rising soon.
“Sales will start to rise in 2009, whilst prices will stop falling in most places by the end of 2010,” writes Bernardos in his report.
But if Bernardos is right, and prices continue to fall this year, that will encourage people to delay their purchase decision, and reduce the number of sales. The article does not pick any holes in his arguments.
And at no point does the article mention the second home market, which operates differently to the primary housing market. Given the present state of the economy, with unemployment rising across Europe, it’s not hard to imagine that it may take a while longer for sales of holiday homes to pick up.
