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Brits struggle to sell properties in Spain

Thursday, 6 January 2011 4:18 PM

Expat property owners in Spain and those who have holiday homes in the sun-soaked country have been warned that they need to drop the asking prices of their homes if they hope to make a sale.

New figures from the country's largest online property listings website - idealista.com - have shown that the price of resale houses in Spain slipped by an average of 5.7 per cent in 2010.

The decline is thought to have been the result of overdevelopment, high Spanish unemployment and the global recession.

House prices in major cities, such as Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia, have plunged by as much as 21 per cent since hitting their peaks in 2007.

Fernando Encinar, head of idealista.com, commented: "Sellers should apply bigger discounts to the prices they are asking for their homes if they want to achieve a sale, not forgetting that in the coming months banks are likely to be offering more aggressive prices on their property stocks."

It has been suggested that the banks' "property stocks" include as many as 200,000 properties, which will eventually go on sale and saturate the market further.

Encinar added: "Many people thought that 2010 would be the year when prices would bottom out and there would be an upturn, but this has not been the case.

"The pace at which prices in most of Spain have been adjusting is proving slower than was expected and in 2011, we will once again find it is going to be a tough year for housing sales."
 

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