The overseas homes market may have already entered recovery in some parts of Spain as one developer has started putting its prices up. Key Mare in Almeria has seen sales rise by 30% in the last three months and now has more international customers than Spanish ones. The company raised prices across its seven resorts in the area by €3000 per property at the start of January. “Almeria is one of the up-and-coming areas of Spain so it’s not as overbuilt as other parts of the coast,” said the company’s head of international sales, Stefan Kdist. “The Spanish have always known this area but now more British and Scandinavian buyers are finding out about it.” Until now, the company has been following the line of many Spanish developers and offering discounts of up to 25%. Developers and banks have been under pressure to lower prices further to help shift the large amount of unsold Spanish property accumulated during the boom. This tactic has worked to some degree, with companies such as Taylor Woodrow seeing sales improve in the last three months by offering discounts of up to 40%. Kdist said Key Mare’s sales increase represented an improvement in confidence but he also hoped the price rise would encourage buyers to feel better about the market. “We wanted to give a signal to people that things are getting better and they should have faith in the situation. Today, people don’t feel there’s such a risk of losing their jobs as they did a year ago. Most economies are recovering and prices and interest rates are low.” With many agents and developers in Spain still suffering the effects of the economic downturn badly, Key Mare’s success emphasises how diverse the market has become. The latest data on the Spanish housing market paints a generally negative picture. Prices continued a steady fall in the fourth quarter of 2009, dropping 6.2% year-on-year, according the country’s housing ministry. The number of transactions also fell 2.6% year-on-year in November, although this was down from a 21% fall in October and transactions rose 5.3% between the two months, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). But there was some good news in that the number of mortgages rose 1.8% year-on-year in November 2009, the first increase since April 2007, according to the INE. Story from OPP (Registration required)

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Spanish Developer Increases Prices

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