Archives for July 2010
July 31st, 2010
A Place in the Sun Live is the UK's biggest and best-attended overseas property exhibition. It's on from the 1st to 3rd of October at the NEC in Birmingham - and you can skip the normal £10 entrance fee by registering online A Place in the Sun Live features thousands of ...
Continue reading Free Entry to A Place in the Sun Exhibition
July 30th, 2010
Spain continues to be one of the most popular expat destinations for British people, according to the most recent data. According to research from property website Primelocation, internet searches in Britain for property abroad are at a record high, up over 100 per cent from this time last year. Data ...
Continue reading Brits Overseas Property Searches Up 100%
July 29th, 2010
Budget airline Ryanair is set to slash 7 out of its 9 flights currently servicing San Javier Airport (Murcia). The controversial airline boss is furious at the region’s business inflexibility and its handing €3 million to the small regional airline Air Nostrum, which mainly operates domestic flights from Madrid. Ryanair ...
Continue reading Ryanair Set to Cut Murcia Flights
July 28th, 2010
The results coming out of Europe’s bank stress test are less important than the accessibility of the inputs to investors. That is why the country with most “failures” – Spain – is emerging as the biggest winner. In a financial crisis sprung by new-fangled securities, Spain went down the old-fashioned way. ...
Continue reading Spain Emerging as Winner after EU Stress Tests
July 27th, 2010
There are a couple of interesting articles from the Overseas Property Professional (OPP) magazine this week. The grim sounding, Spanish Banks Not Helping Property Recovery masks a cheery message: We keep telling the banks that there is nothing wrong with the concept of Spain and that north European buyers will come back, ...
Continue reading Spanish Property News Roundup
July 27th, 2010
The Spanish government announced on Thursday it would postpone or cancel 231 public works projects as part of an austerity drive aimed at slashing a budget deficit equivalent to 11.2 per cent of gross domestic product. José Blanco, the public works minister, said he had been forced to cut €6.4bn ($8.2bn, ...
Continue reading Spain to Cancel €6.4 Billion of Projects to Slash Deficit
July 27th, 2010
The stress test results published by the Bank of Spain on Friday underlined the performance gap between the commercial banks that account for half of the sector and many of the savings banks whose bankrolling of the Spanish property surge left them exposed as the construction boom collapsed. Five Spanish banks ...
Continue reading Spanish Stress Tests Highlight Divergence
July 26th, 2010
The Spanish Homes Network (SHN) furthered its initiative to bolster confidence and credibility in the country’s residential sector this week. Speaking at a press conference in London, SHN managing director Jose Manuel Luque outlined the networks’ intention to offer greater reassurances to both international agents and final customers. “For all homes listed ...
Continue reading SHN Aims to Boost Confidence of Home Buyers and Agents
July 23rd, 2010
Investors are betting that Spain’s government will benefit more than its troubled euro-zone peers from the results of Europe’s “stress tests” of big banks Friday. Despite growing concern about the rigor of the European tests, Spain’s government bond market has rallied in recent days, effectively lowering the country’s cost of borrowing ...
Continue reading Investors Predict Spain Will Benefit from Stress Tests
July 22nd, 2010
In an effort to reassure financial markets about the health of the European Union's banking system, the bloc's countries are stress-testing a large number of their banks and will publish the results on July 23. WHICH BANKS WILL BE TESTED? Ninety-one banks comprising 65 percent of the European banking sector by assets. ...
Continue reading EU Bank Stress Test Results Due
July 21st, 2010
Spain’s banks are deliberately stifling the property recovery they are desperate to see by screwing agency commission rates down to 1.5% to 3%; and by forcing developers to the wall. Agents and developers are getting increasingly frustrated with the inept way in which the Spanish banks are trying to offload their ...
Continue reading Spanish Banks Not Helping Property Recovery
July 20th, 2010
I think this week's news articles are pretty self explanatory. I particularly like the one about President Zapatero being compared to Mugabe regarding property rights. I agree with Mike's comment "while it was a silly comparison, its important the pressure is kept on the Spanish government. Unfortunately it usually takes ...
Continue reading Spanish Property: Not Rocket Science
July 20th, 2010
Torrevieja is the Spanish resort that exploded in size as Brits snapped up apartments and villas as frenetically as the developers knocked them out. But the town dubbed the Costa del Yorkshire is now better known to the Spanish banks as the home of the "British plumber mortgage", and knee-deep ...
Continue reading Despite Property Glut, There Are Few Real Bargains
July 19th, 2010
Spanish banks and cajas, frozen out of the international wholesale finance markets on which they once depended, increased their borrowing from the European Central Bank by nearly half to €126.3bn ($161.2bn) in June from €85.62bn in May, according to figures released by the Bank of Spain. Spanish borrowing from the ECB ...
Continue reading Spanish Data Shows 48% Rise in Loans from ECB
July 16th, 2010
The owners of many of Spain’s developers used the boom to load their companies with debt whilst taking out capital, suggests a new report from the Spanish Savings Banks Foundation FUNCAS. That left developers ill-prepared for the downturn, which is turning out more severe as a result. Despite a decade of ...
Continue reading Indebted Developers Ill-Prepared for Downturn
