HOUSE PRICE DROPS AGAIN

The financial crisis that hits hard Spain during the last years continues without a break and has got a new record. The house price has again nosedived in the last trimester, dropping 9,5 per cent, the biggest fall since the crisis started. After this new decrease, the average price of the houses is 1,565,5 euros per square metre, the sames prices as they were eight years ago, in 2004, according to the last numbers offered by Spanish Government.

Overall prices have fallen by 31% since the crisis hit in 2008. And the problem is that Spain has a vast over capacity of housing, much more houses than people to buy them. Experts estimated that there are 2 million unsold homes all around the country.

By region, the biggest fall in house prices year-on-year, have been in Extremadura where prices declined by 12.25% and Canary Island, by 11,7%. On the opposite side are Ceuta and Melilla, by 1.7%, Navarra, 2.85% and the Basque Country, where prices fell 3.5%. Regarding cities with more than 25.000 inhabitants, the most expensive is San Sebastian, at €3,781 per square metre, followed by Getxo, at 3,640 per square metre. Instead, the square metre is cheaper in the valence municipalities of Novelda, where it costs 748 euros and Villena, 748 euros.

According to the last report made by the company for real estate valuation Tinsa, in  September ‘Capitals and Major Cities’ recorded the steepest year-on-year decline with 13.5%. The remaining areas all fell below the average with very similar year-on-year figures. The largest price falls were in ‘Other Municipalities’ with 10.9%, followed by ‘Mediterranean Coast’ with 10.8% year-on-year, ‘Metropolitan Areas’, with 10.4%, the same as the previous month, and lastly the ‘Balearic and Canary Islands’ with a figure of 10%. In terms of the cumulative declines by area since the top of the market, the fall in prices in the ‘Mediterranean Coast’ reached 39.2% in September; followed by 36% for ‘Capitals and Major Cities’, 33.2% for ‘Metropolitan Areas’, 28.6% for the ‘Balearic and Canary Islands’ and 28.5% for ‘Other Municipalities’, which comprises all those not included in other categories

Ana García