Spain Real Estate News

As the pain of Spain's property crash continues to hit people hard, a nationwide movement is now fighting back.

Regular protests are being staged as banks repossess the homes of those who cannot afford loans taken out when the economic outlook was more rosy.

Young Spanish couples and immigrants are the two groups worst affected. Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos recently announced that the government would hold talks with Spain's banks to try and find ways to lessen the impact of the repossessions.

Read more at bbc.co.uk

Towering apartment blocks, complete with swimming pools and playgrounds, loom over empty streets, weed-filled lots and gaping excavation pits. The lone bank in this mega-development nicknamed "Manhattan" closed two years ago and most storefronts are bricked up.

Apartments galore are for sale here and prices are plunging.

More than 13,000 apartments were supposed to go up to create a mini-city for 30,000 people just 45 minutes outside of Madrid. But only 5,100 were built, many are uninhabited and regular Spaniards who bought them as investments are now competing to offload them for huge losses.

Spain's real estate crash and economic implosion have turned what was supposed to become a vibrant suburban paradise for young Spanish couples and their children into one of the most visible monuments of the country's boom gone bust. Such modern-day ghost towns have become a familiar part of the Spanish landscape, abandoned shells left to slowly decay.

The number of foreclosure proceedings skyrocketed during the economic crisis. Nearly 530,000 were granted by courts from 2008 through September of 2011, most to banks taking homes, housing developments and vast tracts of land for residential and commercial real estate projects that may never become reality.

Read more at Huffington Post

Associations representing some 40,000 owners of illegal homes from across Andalucia announced the creation of a federation to fight against the Regional Government’s Decree to regulate and clarify the situation of houses constructed on rustic land, because they believe that “it doesn’t solve anything”.

For the first time, the homeowners, made up of both Spanish and foreigner residents, met in Cordoba in a meeting organised by the Platforma de Afectados por Inundaciones del Guadalquivir, a group affect by the flooding of the Guadalquivir river.

The meeting was attended by the Federation of Associations of La Lagunas de Chiclana (Cádiz), la Asociación de Afectados por Sanciones Urbanísticas (the Association of those affected by Urban Sanctions) from Cádiz, Abusos Urbanísticos Almanzora No (AUAN) from Almería and from Malaga the Asociacion de Viviendas Irregulares (APVI) and Save Our Homes in Axarquía (SOHA). Residents groups from Cordoba were the most numerous with representatives from La Altea, La Gorgoja II, Las Perlas, Córdoba la Vieja and Fontanar de Quintos.

The associations described the meeting as “very positive” and announced that they will be seeking meetings with political parties and public administrations to look for “a solution, once and for all, for everybody”.

In addition, they announced a protest march which will take place in Sevilla on the 28th of Februrary (Andalucia Day), organised by APVI from Malaga. Paco Leon, president of the groups from Cordoba called for as much support as possible for the march.

Groups who attended the meeting:

MALAGA
Asociación Provincial de viviendas Irregulares…………… President, Mª del Mar Vazquez
Asociación Save Our Homes de la Axarquía (SOHA)…….President, Philip Smalley

ALMERIA

Abusos Urbanísticos Almanzora No (AUAN)......................President, Maura Hillen

CADIZ

Federación de Asociaciones Las Lagunas de Chiclana........VicePresident, Manuel Hidalgo
Asociación de Afectados por Sanciones Urbanísticas........President, Manuel Hidalgo

CÓRDOBA

Mac. De Juntas de Compensación Alamiriya.....................President, Antonio Avilés
La Altea.............................................................................. President, Julio J. Cortés
La Gorgoja II.......................................................................President, Antonio Fernández
Las Perlas...........................................................................President, Araceli Frias
Córdoba La Vieja...............................................................President, Maite Polo
La Forja.............................................................................. President, Manuel Castillo
Fontanar de Quintos.......................................................... President, Angel Patilla
Santa Clara........................................................................ President, Francisco Cabello
Carmen Ribera Baja.......................................................... Representative, Rafael Luque
Paseo al Puente Hierro..................................................... Co-ordinator, Emilio Berná
Rabuda del Castillo........................................................... President, Francisco Castro

CONCLUSIONS

1º THE MEETING WAS DESCRIBED AS VERY POSITIVE.

2º AGREEMENT WAS REACHED TO CREATE AN ANDALUCIAN FEDERATION OF THOSE AFFECTED BY THE LOUA.

3º THERE IS A COMMON DESIRE TO DISSOLVE THE DECREE TO REGULARISE HOUSES ON RUSTIC LAND IN ANDALUCIA BECAUSE IT DOESN’T SOLVE ANYTHING.

4º MEETINGS WILL BE REQUESTED WITH POLITICAL PARTIES TO EXTRACT A COMMITTMENT FOR A SOLUTION ONCE AND FOR ALL.

5º TO GROUP INTEND TO PREPARE A POPULAR LEGISLATIVE INITIATIVE TO DEMAND A DEBATE ON CHANGES TO THE LOUA AS SET OUT IN ARTICLE 111 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF ANDALUCIA.

6º PROTEST MARCHES ARE PLANNED: THE FIRST OF WHICH HAS ALREADY BEEN ORGANISED BY APVI FROM MALAGA AND IS PLANNED TO TAKE PLACE ON THE 28/02/2012 BEFORE THE PARLIAMENT OF ANDALUCIA IN SEVILLE.

7º ABOVE ALL THE ASSOCIATIONS WANT MODIFICATION OF THE LOUA (LEY 7/2002 DE 17 DE DICIEMBRE)

Contact: Maura Hillen (AUAN)  661329919 or info@almanzora-au.org

Spanish home sales declined in December for a 10th month as the euro area’s fourth-largest economy relapsed into a recession that began in 2008 when a property boom ended.

The number of transactions fell 25.3 percent from a year earlier, the National Statistics Institute in Madrid said in an e-mailed statement today.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is battling to turn around a slump in the real-estate industry as unemployment rose to a 15- year high of 22.9 percent in the last quarter of 2011 and the Bank of Spain sees the economy shrinking 1.5 percent this year.

Read more at Bloomberg.com

AUAN, 9th February 2012

British expatriates in Albox, a small provincial town in Andalucía, Spain, faced an anxious New Year in 2010 after police served notice that their homes were to be bulldozed after their construction was declared illegal.

Having overturned the demolition orders on the basis that they had not been informed of the proceedings, the couples vowed to fight on. Since then they have engaged in a protracted and expensive court battle to try and defend their homes.

Yesterday, one couple received the devastating news that the courts have again decided that they must face the bulldozers. Their home, in which they have invested their life savings, was constructed with planning permission from the local council in 2002 and possesses all of its necessary paperwork.

Lawyers acting for the regional government (the Junta de Andalucía) successfully argued that the property risked provoking an urban nucleus. The revocation of the building licence was upheld and the retired couple were ordered to pay costs. They are now faced with the prospect of an expensive appeal.

A spokesperson for AUAN, a pressure group made up of mostly British homeowners, responded to this latest ruling saying “Welcome to the surreal world of planning in Andalucía. The regional government claims that its much publicised Decree will grant recognition to illegal buildings in Andalucía but this couple, who have a building license, face demolition”.

The regional government argues that the property runs the risk of creating an urban nucleus. Which urban nucleus are they referring to? Promoters swamped this area with urban settlements and sold houses to unsuspecting Brits whilst the administration fiddled about with its legislation and comprehensively failed to enforce it.”

“Has the Junta de Andalucía learned nothing? Demolitions damage the beleaguered property market and the international reputation of Spain. The response of the regional government to this planning disaster is more tinkering with the laws, creating, in our view, even more confusion, complexity and traps for an unwary purchaser to fall into. Oh, and by the way” the spokesperson concluded “if you want to purchase a house in Andalucía, the Property Register, currently gives this house a clean bill of health”.

Contact: info@almanzora-au.org or 661329919

Failed Spanish savings bank Caja Mediterraneo announced losses of 2.713 billion euros ($3.6 billion) in 2011, in a financial statement released Wednesday.

The bank known as CAM, formerly Spain's 10th biggest, was taken over by Banco Sabadell as part of a shake-up to stabilise the financial sector which was hit hard by the collapse of a building boom in 2008.

Its earnings figures filed to the Spanish stock market authority on Wednesday night showed it had taken a hit of 2.383 billion euros from the fall in value of its financial assets, leading to a net loss for the year of 2.713 billion.

Spanish banks are lumbered with housing loans that turned bad after the collapse and properties that have lost value.

Read the story at Google.com

Banco Popular said profit fell by almost one fifth in 2011 as the Spanish bank made 1.7 billion euros ($2.2 billion) of provisions against bad property loans.

The bank on Wednesday said profit fell 18.7 percent to 479.6 million euros , just above a consensus analyst forecast of 477 million euros.

Spanish banks have hundreds of billions of euros of unsaleable land and property and unrecoverable loans to bankrupt developers sitting on their balance sheets, four years after a housing and construction crash.

Read more at Reuters.com

Santander, the euro zone's biggest bank, reported a sharp drop in annual profit after it set aside money against foreclosed Spanish property, anticipating government demands that lenders recognise heavy real estate losses.

Spanish banks have hundreds of billions of euros of unsaleable land and property and unrecoverable loans to bankrupt developers sitting on their balance sheets, four years after a housing and construction crash.

Santander's grim outlook for the property sector on Tuesday comes a day after data showed Spain's economy looked set to slip into recession after contracting for the first time in two years in the last quarter of 2011.

Read more at Reuters.com