According to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the bad bank created by Spain in efforts to ease the mounting pressure on wasteful real estate assets has shown signs of setting a yardstick for the property market in the country, and is reducing the prices of houses. The efforts made by the Spanish government to safeguard the value of properties in the market may be overwhelmed by the volumes of buys made by the bank.
Reports published by the IMF said that the European Commission had approved the purchases and SAREB as the bank is also known, the bad bank will purchase foreclosed properties from lenders who are having trouble finding investors. The bank bailout program’s chairman, Fernando Restoy, said that the average discount at which these properties would be sold will be in excess of sixty percent. However, he went on to say that those prices mustn’t be referred to the rest of the country’s real estate market, which happens to have fallen by around thirty percent since the property market boom.
Loss of Employment and Decline of the Property Market
The report released by the IMF said that the operational rationalization of this objective won’t be straightforward as further significant declines are very possible in the Spanish real estate sector. Meanwhile, the country’s biggest bank in line to receive bailout funds from European lenders, BFA-Bankia is expected to cut around 6,000 jobs this year, or over one fourth of its entire workforce, while losing approximately nineteen billion Euros, the lender revealed.
On a monthly basis, the volume of transactions recorded in Spain with regards to real estate has dropped by around seventy percent from the market's peak in 2007. The reason for this significant decline has been attributed to the drop in mortgage lending, where volumes fell by over eighty five percent to just under four billion Euros towards the end of the third quarter of 2012.
Article comments
1 - Mr. Spanish Property
If my opinion counted I would say Spanish housing market is ready for take-off in 2013!!! I just bought a luxus house there is a lot of property available for cheap.
2 - Domus
I don't think anybody quite knows what is going to happen, especially with what is happening with Cyprus at the moment, maybe they hold the key? I read an interesting article yesterday whilst searching for news on the property market in Spain - which provides an interesting hypothesis, whether or not it is correct only time will tell. I feel there are more testing issues than the property market which lies at the feet of the government that needs to be resolved before the country can properly move forward.