The lack of satisfactory offers has forced the Catalan Government to postpone its plan of selling several buildings off for cheap and losing money. Selling real estate assets is one of the ways the Catalan Government hopes to increase revenue and reduce the public deficit. Since none of the offers reached the minimum expected, the Government has decided to wait and postpone the sale.
With this label, foreign house buyers can be 100% sure that the new bought property fulfils all the quality and town planning regulations. The Catalan Minister for Territory and Sustainability, in charge of Housing, Lluís Recoder, announced the creation of an official label recognising the “quality of real estate”, in order to offer more legal safety and guarantees to consumers. Recoder hopes this certificate will help the sector, as consumers will be in a safe framework, from a juridical point of view.
In Spain as a whole housing sales dropped by 38%.New-build apartment sales in Catalonia fell by 35% in August, compared to the same month in 2010.
In the current times of crisis within the real state market, money from Russian tourists is particularly noticeable. Rich Russian citizens come to Tarragona’s Costa Daurada to buy houses close to the seashore. Their search is on for "exclusive homes'' with attached land to use them as summer houses or as a base to permanently relocate to. When not using the house, they may rent them.
The Spanish Government temporary reduces the VAT on new flat’s purchase, asks the largest and profitable companies to advance money from their corporate tax, and obliges doctors to prescribe generic drugs and not brands. With all those measures, the Spanish Government expects to get 4,900 million extra euros until the end of the year.
According to the consultancy firm Jones Lang Lasalle, the office rental rate for second quarter of 2011 in Barcelona has increased 42% compared to the same period in 2010. 74,500 square metres of new office space have been rented out between April and June 2011, 14% more than those registered during the first quarter. The “prime” zone has reached 2005 activity levels.
In larger cities, the new housing stock is much smaller and in Barcelona it is almost non existent. However, in other towns and rural areas the current stock will not be completely absorbed until 2015, according to a study from CatalunyaCaixa. Prices will stabilise in larger cities and still drop by 10% where the larger stocks are concentrated. The Catalan housing market is now in better shape than in the rest of Spain. In Catalonia the new housing stock decreased by 2,000 units, while in Spain as a whole it increased by 2%.
‘Construmat’ is Spain’s main trade fair for the construction industry and will run until Saturday May 21st. Barcelona’s fair will have a “sister” event in China next year, with Chinese companies but also with those present at the current ‘Construmat’.
During the first three months of 2011, housing prices dropped by 4.5% compared to the same period in 2010. The end of fiscal advantages for property purchase is the main reason behind this drop. The average square metre price in Catalonia is now set at 2,145.2 euros. These prices have not been seen since early 2006 and represent a 14% drop compared with the historic maximum in 2008.
For the first time in four years December 2010 saw a small decrease in the availability of office space in Barcelona. This indicator would show that the office space market is starting to head towards getting on the recuperation track.