Property trends in Spain
MADRID: Spain’s embattled real estate sector received more bad news Friday when it was announced that property sales were down almost 14 per cent last year, with the sharpest decline in the fourth quarter.
“In 2007, the total number of property transactions was 788,518, a drop of 13.93 per cent over 2006,” the CRE, an organisation that collects data on property transactions, said in a report.
The largest drop was in sales of older homes, which saw a decline of 15.05 percent, compared to 12.41 percent in new properties, it said.
In the fourth quarter, the decline was even more pronounced, with transactions plummeting 21 percent from 203,993 in 2006 to 161,906 in the same period in 2007.
The figures are further evidence of the slowdown in the property sector in Spain after years of growth during which millions of new homes were built and prices rocketed.
The government announced in January that property prices rose just 4.8 percent in 2007, down from 9.1 percent the previous year and the lowest increase since the boom in the market began 10 years ago.
