Tinsa have released figures year on year from April to April showing a 4.6% decline in Spanish property prices. If you look at statistics on a month to month basis, they are even showing a minimal increase in prices. When you examine the trend and if the figures are a true reflection on reality, the market has stabilsed and will even show growth by close of the year.
I do have concerns about the accuracy of the figures produced by Tinsa, because they are aggregated from bank valuations rather than closed property deal figures. For me Spanish banks have a particularly poor history when it comes to valuing houses and for my money, many of the bad loans the banks are tackling at the moment are as a direct result of ridiculous valuations.
I have been present on many occasions when valuers have been in houses and their process is weak at best. In fact one of the valuers asked me, an estate agent, what I thought the property was worth and actually gave that figure to their lending department. Not particularly scientific!
When buying a Costa Del Sol property you certainly need to get your information from as many sources as possible, using figures like that produced by Tinsa as a rough guide, rather than taking them literally. These figures are now showing coastal property to have an average price of €2,033 per M2, back during the boom time they were as high as €2590 per M2.
The other positive indicator, specifcally for the Marbella area is the number of transactions recorded in the first quarter, as mentioned in one of my previous posts. Don´t get me wrong, I am delighted to see some positive data emerging from Spain. I do think that some of the official data can be taken with a pinch of salt and we need to have a number of these type of reports over another 6 months to gauge whether or not this is a true reflection on what is really going on in the marketplace.
