Spain Real Estate News

British property investors are still showing considerable interest in buying real estate abroad despite the recession, according to the latest figures from an international search website.

Spain is the number one search destination, pushing France into second place, according to the latest figures from primelocation.com. Bargain prices in Spain are believed to be the reason it has sprung to the top of the list although it has always been very popular with UK investors.

Searches for properties in Spain have increased 27% year on year. The country now accounts for 30.53% of international searches. France is the second most popular with 27% and the US in third place with 14.34%, that's up 87% compared to May 2008 and could be due to bargain properties in Florida.

Searches in Portugal have also increased by 15% since May 08 and by 12% since April 09 while Italy is showing a 13% increase in searches since May 08. Italy is in fourth place with 6.24% of searches, followed by Portugal with 5.93%

Interest in Switzerland has also increased 20% year on year, possibly fuelled by the recent increase in income tax for top earners in the UK

Former popular areas for British investors such as Cyprus and Bulgaria still record only a tiny part of overall searches at 1.26% and 0.75% respectively.

The United Arab Emirates is in sixth place with 1.73%, turkey in eighth place with 1.18% and Australia in ninth place with 0.93%.

'Although the market is slow there are still buyers and investors out there with an interest in certain areas. Many will be looking to take advantage of the reduced property prices,' said Ann Wright, International Development Manager at Primelocation.com.

 Source: PropertyWire

MADRID, June 26 (Reuters) - Spanish banks and builders desperate to get rid of unsold buildings are jumping on board a new scheme to offload it -- a bus tour showcasing property so cheap that sellers don't want to be identified.

Under the strict cover of anonymity so as not to appear desperate, banks selling defaulters' assets and builders on the verge of going bust have teamed up with canny entrepreneurs to shuttle investors around blocks of flats, empty shops and offices being offered at half price or less.

The idea, which organisers say is the first of its type in Europe, has already been running for 1-1/2 months around the resort town Marbella and has sold 20 percent of the properties on its books -- not bad for a market that has been virtually paralysed for the past year.

"It's such a simple idea and just snowballed," said Africa Leon, whose promotions company Circulo Financiero Internacional organises the tour.

The first stop on Thursday's inaugural Madrid bus is a block of 20 flats near the city centre, selling for between 160,000 and 200,000 euros -- half the original price tag.

The building was repossessed from the developers by one of Spanish savings bank, known as 'cajas', which have been badly hit by Spain's property market collapse.

The tour went on to two vast apartments in the up-market Salamanca district of Madrid, a 2,000 square metre shopping centre going for 9 million euros and another block of flats.

Victoria Ansola, a property consultant who normally seeks out Costa del Sol apartment blocks on behalf of German and U.S. funds, was a fan of the bus.

"It's comfortable, they take you around, you can get five appointments in an afternoon, and then you can return and negotiate," she said.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Anyone can get on the bus and lawyer Emilia Zaballos, who specialises in organising young people into buyer groups with greater clout, said the idea could change the old rules of a game that has favoured professional investors up to now. "It's totally innovative. This is not just for investors. Anyone can access these kind of bargains. Who normally gets access to these things? Up until now those with the information and the money."

From 1997 to 2007, Spanish house prices tripled on a wave of domestic and foreign speculative buying. Official statistics showed a 5.4 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2008 but market players say these figures underplay the retreat in prices which has, in any case, greatly accelerated in 2009.

Property companies' biggest problem is slow sales.

Zaballos said seven builders and real estate firms had filed for administration at her small practice in 10 days alone -- straddled with debts and without income as banks refuse to offer mortgages to buyers they had already signed up. (Reporting by Ben Harding; Editing by Karen Foster and Andrew Macdonald)

Source: Reuters

 Figures released by the Spanish Ministry of housing have shown that only 484 properties were sold to foreign nationals in the first three months of 2009, illustrating the depth of the property downturn on the Iberian peninsular. The figures, which indicate a sharp drop in the properties sold to foreigners, also illustrate the overall housing situation in Spain.

* 614,000 completed new homes left unsold

* Analysts say number less than forecast

* Another 627,000 still in construction

* Building tycoon abandons infamous project half finished

MADRID, June 12 (Reuters) - Spain had 614,000 new homes sitting unsold at the end of 2008 -- lower than most analysts' estimates -- according to the first major survey of Europe's most over-stocked home market.

Almost half of those are clustered on the over-developed coast according to the housing ministry study, which surveyed or visited 6,810 real estate companies -- around 70 percent of a sector that is shrinking fast in the face of one of Europe's most savage property downturns.

The survey is the first attempt by any public or private body to pin down the size of Spain's unsold stock -- estimated at over 1 million homes by some economists -- using a methodology similar to the respected Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) study of the UK market.

"The survey looks good to me, very representative and well designed," said Jose Carlos Diez, an economist with Intermoney in Madrid. However, he added the figure was still represented a serious challenge despite being below many estimates.

"You should not lose perspective, the figure is less than expected, but 600,000 homes is still a lot of homes." At the current rate of sale, the stock will take around three years to be run down while Spain's housing market -- the former motor of economic growth -- suffers a hangover after a 10 year boom. In that time prices tripled and huge tracts of the coast in particular were disfigured by rows of uniform apartment blocs.

In 2007 alone Spain built 690,000 new homes -- as many as France, Britain and Germany combined -- even though underlying demand is normally less than half that. Now hundreds of builders are going bust every quarter amid a 34 percent dive in sales in the year to date and their assets clog up banks' asset sheets.

The survey published on Friday also notes that Spain had 627,000 homes in the process of construction at the end of 2008 -- 70 percent of them almost finished and 39 percent already sold.

PACO PACKS IT IN

The study comes after news one of Spain's best-known building tycoons has abandoned what would have been Spain's biggest development built by a single firm -- a maze of tower blocks containing 13,500 flats outside the small village of Sesena on the red-dirt plains of central Spain.

Spanish press reported that Francisco Hernandez, known by his nickname 'Paco the well-digger', walked away from the project after building 5,600 of the flats but not road, power or water connections which the local council estimates will cost 18 million euros.

Newspapers quote Hernandez, who is as much known for his opulent lifestyle as the massive development south of Madrid, saying the local council would not give him the necessary licences to finish the project which is sandwiched between two motorways on the site of a former olive grove.

Neither Hernandez nor the mayor of Sesena were reachable for comment on Friday. (Reporting by Ben Harding; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Source: Reuters

England World Cup star Sir Geoff Hurst is leading a £2million High Court claim against Spanish property developers.

Hurst has joined forces with five others, each of whom claims they have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds investing in luxury apartments near Marbella that will never be built.

Olympic rower Sir Steve Redgrave and former England rugby star Tony Underwood endorsed the projects along with Hurst before finding some investors had lost their deposits when schemes were scrapped.

The three had invested in the Royal Marbella Group.

The sportsmen say that while some of its schemes were completed, others - including Lince Sanctuario near Seville, where Redgrave invested £2million in an off-plan villa - will never see the light of day.

Redgrave and Underwood are not among the claimants in the High Court action.

Five years since investing in the projects, the land has changed hands and the current owners will not recognise the contracts of Hurst and the other investors, the legal action claims.

Hurst invested in an off-plan apartment at the former Royal Marbella development in Manilva on the Costa del Sol.

However, construction work will not go ahead as building licences were illegally issued by mayor Pedro Tirado, who was later jailed for accepting bribes.

'I am angry at the lies I was told,' said Hurst. 'I am determined to take action to recover the money we lost.'

Source: Mail online