Fall in Spanish property market slows

Lowest fall in housing sales since crash in property market

House sales are still at very low levels compared to those registered before the crash in the property market at the end of 2007. According to figures published today by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) housing sales were down by 20.3% compared to the same month a year ago. However, this is the lowest fall since housing sales began to decline at the beginning of 2008. In addition over 37.000 transactions were registered, which is only the second time sales have reached this figure since January this year.

Out of all the 37.000 transactions registered 50.5% were for new housing and 49.5% were for used housing. As usual the biggest drop in sales has been registered in used housing with a fall of 20.5% compared to a year ago (18,351 transactions).
New housing sales have fallen by 20.1% to 18,688 transactions. This fall is higher than that registered in June when new housing sales fell by only 18.1% compared to the same period last year.

When comparing figures for July with those for June it can be seen that housing sales have increased by 4.7% for the third month in a row while during the first 7 months of the year housing sales have fallen overall by 33.1%.

The figures for July are encouraging because only in April 2008 housing sales registered a fall of less than 20.3% as seen in July this year. However, this could also be down to the fact that the figures for April 2008 were based on comparing those for April 2007 which had fewer working days in the month due to the fact that it coincided with Easter week.

Property sales fall 31% in first quarter of 2009

According to figures published by the Ministry for Housing during the first 6 months of this year 217,589 houses and flats were sold in Spain – 31.16% less than during the first quarter of 2008 (316.096 houses and flats were sold during this period).

These are the worst figures for the housing market since 2004 when records on the number of property sales began. The fall of 31% in housing sales is the same as the fall registered for the same period in 2008 compared to the previous year.

During the second quarter of 2009 112,886 housing sales were recorded which is a fall of 29% compared to the same period for 2008 although it is an increase of 7.8% compared to the first 3 months of 2009.

The price of private housing fell by 8.9% in August compared to August 2008 which means that the year to year fall in prices is lessening.

According to the index of Mercados Inmobiliarios Españoles (IMIE) published today by the property evaluators Tasaciones Inmobiliarias (TINSA) house prices have fallen by 14% compared to figures for 2007 when housing prices reached their peak in Spain.