Spanish Property News Roundup
June 16th, 2009
After last week’s flurry of positivity, I was half-expecting to produce a newsletter from the flip-side this week – one full of doom and gloom. While there are some somber articles, yet again we find more reasons to be cheerful about Spain and its property market.
First off, the Moneycorp Euro Weekly Update, shows that Sterling is currently at a 2009 high against the Euro – and shows no sign of changing course.
Those of you in the UK can now get 12% more Euros than you could on January 1st 2009. Clearly this won’t be sufficient to create a stampede of buyers for Spanish property, but it does help minimise one of the problems Brits have had when buying property in Euros.
The latest TINSA House Price Index also contains a nugget of good news.
It’s still early days, and far too early to definitively call the bottom of the market, but the TINSA data indicates that house prices in Spain have stayed pretty flat since the start of the year.
In my opinion, the TINSA data is the most credible information available. Even so, I think most people would have more confidence in it if it tallied in any meaningful way with other official sources – which it doesn’t.
I’ve ranted countless times about how utterly useless is the data from the Spanish Institute of National Statistics and the Ministry of Housing so I won’t bore you with repeating it again. However, just look at the quality of data the government can produce when it chooses to.
In Spanish Property Overhang Shrinks we learn two things:
- The amount of unsold new-build property is lower than had been previously estimated.
- The government can generate useful data when it suits them.
Clearly the first point is good news – although the size of the property overhang in Spain is still significant.
Rated by economists as sound and representative, the new government data has been accepted as an accurate measure of the market.
I can only hope that, flushed with this success, the government will now see their way to producing meaningful Spanish house price information – and make it freely and transparently available to all.
Who knows? Perhaps actual, accurate data about the Spanish property market might show that things aren’t as bad as some guesstimate?
Finally, check out the Financial Times Special Report about Spain for a good summary of what’s happening in the country at the moment. Overall I’d say it provides a balanced, informative picture.
Martin Dell, Kyero.com
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