In my opinion the answer to that question is NO.
The Community Autonomous of Murcia (and probably the other 16 Communities Autonomous) don´t care about this issue. For them the prices of the properties have never dropped.
Murcias has an informatic program calle P.A.C.O, where everybody can enter the details of a property (built square meters, situation on the city/town/village, year of construction...) and then the authorities give you the value, that according to those details, the property has for them.
In times of wealthness this is a reasonable way so people don´t fraud declaring on the purchase deeds values under the market value and paying the rest in black money.
But today it is crazy to keep the same values as in 2007 and even more, and some times upto twice more. It is notorious that market has fallen down and properties are much cheaper than a year or two years ago.
It doesn´t matter for them. So beware if you are thinking to buy a property in Spain. Specially if the property is sold not by a profesional developer but from a private person. Why?
Very easy, if the property comes from a developer this one will charge you 7% VAT ( tax that belong to the State) and you will pay to the Community of Murcia (or any other) usually 1%, so if you discover that your property, to the Community, is worht 150.000 € instead 100.000 €, is not that much. But if you buy from a private person, then the tax payable to the Community is 7%, and a extra difference of 50.000 € could be really painful.
Check with your solicitor to find out, before signing the contract, how much is worth the property for the authorities besides the price you pay, because the tax will be paid not over the price, but over the value given by the authorities (obviously if this one is higher than the price, but not viceversa)
Best regards to all of you.
Antonio Robles
Solicitor www.serveco.es antoniojara@serveco.es