Archives for March 2009
March 13th, 2009
If you own a Spanish property you could be entitled to reclaim money from Spanish government after a landmark court ruling Up to 10,000 Britons with homes in the sun could be entitled to reclaim more than £140m in overpaid capital gains tax (CGT) following a landmark court ruling. Alan Roy, 65, ...
Continue reading Spanish Property Tax Refunds
March 12th, 2009
The number of unemployed in Spain jumped by 154,058 in February over the previous month to nearly 3.5 million, as employers continued to slash jobs in the country's worst recession in a generation, the labour ministry said Tuesday. By the end of February there were 3,481,859 unemployed workers in Spain, up ...
Continue reading Spanish Unemployed Tops 3.5M
March 12th, 2009
Spain will call for the International Monetary Fund to be given more resources to better fight the global downturn at next month's Group of 20 summit, according to a document seen Wednesday. "The resources of the International Monetary Fund should be reinforced to protects its role as the lender of last ...
Continue reading Spain Seeks to Strengthen IMF
March 11th, 2009
Despite my reservations about the official house price data from the Spanish Ministry of Housing (MVIV) and the National Institute of Statistics (INE), we've been updating and translating some of that data and making it available here. We've now decided to stop updating that data because the data from Tinsa is ...
Continue reading Goodbye MVIV & INE, Hello Tinsa
March 11th, 2009
Demand for new homes in Spain may have collapsed, but the number of new homes being finished is still close to record highs thanks to long lead times in the construction sector. According to new data from the Ministry of Development (Fomento) there were 615,000 Spanish property completions in 2008, ...
Continue reading Spain Continues to Build New Homes
March 11th, 2009
Spanish house sales dropped by over a third in the fourth quarter of 2008 versus a year earlier, the Housing Ministry said on Thursday. The ministry said 125,419 houses were sold in Spain in October, November and December compared to 192,050 in the fourth quarter of 2007, a drop of ...
Continue reading Spanish House Sales Drop 35% Q4 2008
March 10th, 2009
We have three top-quality articles this week which deal with different aspects of the financial system in Spain and the rest of Europe. In Spanish Banks Delay Impact of Bad Debts we learn that the level of bad debtors in Spain is so high that banks and building societies are choosing ...
Continue reading History Repeating Itself in Spain
March 10th, 2009
While some are seeking to cash in on the rise of the euro, others have found the cost of running a holiday home or retiring on the Continent too high as the pound has fallen to historic lows. Foreign currency broker HiFX has seen a 180% rise in the amount of ...
Continue reading Currency Exchange Matters
March 9th, 2009
Two Spanish regional savings banks on Monday said they had reached a preliminary merger deal, marking the first in an expected string of tie ups among Spain's small, liquidity-starved banks during the global crisis. The proposed integration of Unicaja, based in Spain's southern Andalucia region, and the smaller Caja Castilla La ...
Continue reading Unicaja Merger: First of Many in Spain?
March 6th, 2009
The Spanish property crash is firmly upon us all. Prices are still dropping, the volume of buyers is low and the future could hardly be worse. If you are trying to sell your property then you need every possible ‘edge’ to have any chance of success. So, is there anything that ...
Continue reading How to Sell Your Spanish Property
March 5th, 2009
He's at it again. Last year he was busily trying to worry us all that inflation was set to get completely out of hand among the 16 countries who make up the eurozone. Now the President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, is hard at it on another tack ...
Continue reading No Deflation Threat In Europe: Central European Bank
March 4th, 2009
Spanish banks are returning to property ownership to avoid loading more bad loans on to their balance sheets but the strategy is risky and unlikely to be as profitable as their real estate buying spree 15 years ago. Spain's eight biggest banks last year formed or resurrected property wings that have ...
Continue reading Spanish Banks Delay Impact of Bad Debts
March 3rd, 2009
My article last week about valuing Spanish property attracted a fair bit of attention - not least from Property Pulse reader, David Jesner - who suggested a completely different method of doing so. David's method is best suited for valuing a detached property, and is based on the assumption that a ...
Continue reading How to Value Spanish Property
March 3rd, 2009
In what is becoming almost an every day event in Spain, the Mayor of Alcaucín, a town in La Axarquía region of rural Andalucía popular with British buyers, has been arrested for taking bribes in return for reclassifying land and granting building licences. Socialist Mayor José Manuel Martín Alba, 55, a ...
Continue reading Mayor of Alcaucin Arrested for Corruption
March 2nd, 2009
The government of Spain will EUR 1 billion to reform the country's tourism infrastructure in 2009, more than double the amount originally planned, the industry and tourism ministry said Thursday. In 2008, the government said it would provide EUR 400 million to hotels and other tourist sector establishments to help them ...
Continue reading One Billion Euros to Reform Spanish Tourism
