I agree with Richie in that Spain is the No.1 tourist destination and the most popular for those choosing to move abroad, these are both facts.
I would also say that nothing is likely to change, even in the long term.
Nevertheless real estate is going through a bad patch, no doubt about that either.
In my opinion Spanish developers have built too many properties too quickly causing prices to rise at unsustainable rates and this was fuelled by the availablility of cheap money and short-term speculation (off-plan deals).
Buyers in the next few years will be looking for properties to live in or enjoy as holiday homes long-term.
Most sales sales will be second-hand properties because there is an increasing glut of these but buyers will be looking for bargains and sellers have to adjust asking prices accordingly.
How many 1,000's properties do Kyero.com (for example) have listed? What proportion of the whole is this? What sort of figure are we talking about, it obviously runs into millions, but how many millions?
There was a similar crisis in the 90's but caused by different reasons.
The short of it was that the UK pulled out of the EMS and Sterling hit the bottom of the barrel. Spain devalued within the EMS, which eased the situation for them almost immediately but real estate values continued to fall to around 50% of the previous peak.
Within a couple of years tourism started to improve dramatically.
By the late 90's the UK economy had bounced back, the Brits started buying Spanish real estate like never before and the boom continued until now.
It has been suggested that a simple solution for Spain would be to devalue again, if that were possible, but it is not so thay have to do it the hard way.
One has to consider the overall effect on the Spanish economy because construction, tourism and associated industries account for around 30% of the workforce.
There are just too many properties for sale, the construction industry is grinding to a halt, Spanish tourism is suffering from fierce competition from emergent and recovering destinations and unemployment will increase.
Many redundant borrowers will be unable to afford their mortgage repayments and even more properties will enter the resale market.
In the end the real estate market will start to move again but only when values have fallen to realistic levels.
It is up to the real estate agents to get things moving and that means convincing selling clients to reduce prices and the sooner we accept that the quicker things will get going again.
Sorry but that is my opinion!
This is the THIRD major crisis for Spanish real estate. The first one occurred during the oil crisis of the mid-70's.
Both times before it took the same course!
Homefinder | 
