Cómo vender pisos en tiempos de crisis

Two years ago, an apartment in the center of Barcelona sold in under a week. Today it can thttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifake 6 months or more. With this as a background, the Asociación Profesional de Expertos Inmobiliarios (Apei) has begun organizing workshops for frustrated real estate agents, offering tips on how to get rid of all those unsold properties. One representative's advice? Get up early, work harder than the competition, and loads of advertising. Go get 'em, tiger. Source: Diario Metro, 15-Nov

Catalonia Property Sales Fall 20% In Latest Trimester*

Seems the disinflation of the Barcelona (and Spain) real estate bubble is unfolding just as it does in the text books. First the average time on market extends dramatically. It is currently about 6 months—twice what it was just over one year ago.

Home (well, apartments in this case) sales fall as sellers hold out for their asking price. This is very likely what we are seeing in these numbers released today by the Registradores de la Propiedad. Additional factors weighing down prices and buyer demand in this most recent quarter are tightening credit conditions (yes, even in Spain) and double-digit increases in the price of food.

Add on top of that the jobs lost in the construction sector (yes, South American immigrants buy property too), said to possibly approach 22,000 lost jobs in Catalonia alone, and eventual but inevitable losses of jobs of property agents and ancillary home improvement sectors, and suddenly you've got yourself a self-perpetuating downward spiral.

To be sure, prices will not fall immediately. And at least one dreamer, Spain's ministra de Vivienda, Carme Chacón, quoted in today's news, comforted herself with statistics pointing to continuing price appreciation albeit what she estimates to be a more earthly 5% for this year.

But this observation, alas, is the last refuge of those determined to cling to the fantasy that the party can go on. The last 2 steps in the unraveling of a speculative bubble are the slow, begrudging price cuts on the part of a few owners who have no choice but to sell. Then all hell breaks lose as los demás realize that they need to get out while the gettin's good. And a competitive round of price cuts—not to mention repossessions—sets in, the bottom of which only time will identify.

But don't expect this to happen overnight. The first round of officially tallied price cuts are unlikely to show up in government statistics until spring or summer of 2008. After that, it's anyone's guess how fast the air rushes out.

While Catalonia was near the top of the list of sales declines, other regions experienced even greater stalls:

Cantabria -27%
Canarias -21%
Catalonia -20%
Valencia -18%
Galicia -17.5%

No word on Castille-La Mancha. Will look for that figure.

*Doesn't immediately make sense that these numbers would be for the 2nd quarter (trimester, as they call it here) and not the 3rd. I will also try to make sure this wasn't a typo in my source, www.diariometro.es

Chávez Proves His Real Value: Uniting the Socialist and Conservative Parties of Spain, As the World Looks On Bemused

Spain, and presumably the mushrooming expat Venezuelan community, is getting a big kick out of the king's (Juan Carlos I) historic rebuke aimed at firebrand Venezuelan populist crackpot Hugo Chávez in Chile yesterday at the 7th annual IberoAmerican Summit.

Every paper in Spain this Sunday morning, left, right, center, is emblazoned with the headline, "King Tells Chávez to Shut Up," or some version of that. But unaccustomed to following the rules of decorum and drunk with petro-power, the man who has single handedly destroyed a nation while purporting to fix it continued his petulant performance, insulting former Spanish president José María Aznar (whom he referred to repeatedly as a "fascist" and accused of having a hand in the attempted military coup against him in 2002). As if that were not antics enough, recently elected Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega seemed to follow Chávez's lead when it came his turn to speak, lambasting as "mafiosa" the Spanish electric company Unión Fenosa (for allegedly not making good on its promise to extend the electric grid to outlying regions of the country) and accusing Spain (along with the U.S.) of interfering in his country's domestic politics in order to (unsuccessfully) prevent his election in 2006. An exasperated Don Juan Carlos eventually abandoned the reunion as a visibly shaken and begrieved Michelle Bachelet, the meeting's host, scurried out after him.

No big fan of the PP (or the monarchy for that matter), it was interesting to learn Sunday morning that Aznar had called to thank both Zapatero and Don JC for intervening on his behalf. Surely an historic low point in these sorts of diplomatic summits. Leave it to Hugo to put a Romper Room face on an assemblage of the region's leaders, but also, perhaps testimony to the corrosive legacy of both the Monroe Doctrine and Spanish colonialism.

Let them eat olive oil

Just imagine the nationwide panic as prices for milk, eggs and flour rise as no time in recent memory. Everyone here who patrons a fruit stand or supermarket is pretty much on a pension one way or another (government pensions for the elderly typically run about 600 Euro a month while the median take-home pay for all but the toniest of workers, as discussed in a previous post, hovers around 1,000 Euro monthly), and so even the most modest increase in the price of daily staples can quickly send a household budget into the red.

Inflation for October here came in at a disconcerting 3.6% annualized rate, although officials say they don't expect that to continue into 2008.

Just when the year on year increase in the price of onions (+22%), chicken (+18%) and sardines (+15%) were making headlines, it turns out that October is turning out to be the worst month of all, with the price of just about every household staple jumping 3.5% in just 30 days' time. Everything, that is, except for that liquid gold of the so-called Mediterranean diet, olive oil, whose price has actually fallen, September '06 to September '07, by a surprising 18.8%

Coffee too, rumored to have been joining the price run, seems to be staying relatively stable, with an increase year over year of a mere 0.3%. And while the official stats from the Ministerio de Industria, Comercio y Turismo report that the prices of oranges have climbed 3.5%, I have found that a 3 kilo bag of juice oranges cost significantly less than it did just a couple of weeks ago. Apparently it is now high season.

El gran desastre

La previsió amb què treballa el govern és que diumenge quedin apuntalats els fonaments de l'estació de Bellvitge. Paral·lelament se seguirà treballant, previsiblement fins a finals de la setmana que ve, per reforçar la plataforma dels 300 metres de via sobre el túnel de FGC per poder restablir el servei "com a molt tard el 5 de novembre".

Notícia publicada al diari AVUI, p 27. Dissabte, 27 d'octubre

Manifestació a BCN per un transport digne

El lector informa: "Dilluns 29 (19h) a la plaça de Sant Jaume, manifestació per demanar un transport digne".

Don't Blame Maggie (Ella No Tiene La Culpa!)

¿Quién es el responsable?
"Para encontrar a los verdaderos culpables hay que remontarse a varios años atrás, a la Barcelona postolímpica. En la segunda mitad de los noventa, asistimos a una inacabable disputa acerca de por dónde de tenía que pasar el AVE en la ciudad de Barcelona... Al final, se decidió que por el centro de la ciudad, con paradas en Sants, en Passeig de Gràcia y en la Sagrera, muchas estaciones, ciertamente, para un tren de alta velocidad. Y en esta decisión están las causas de los males..."

¿Quien tomo esta decisión?
"Yo recuerdo una famosa foto en la que están todos los responsables de tal decisión: el ministro (PP), el conseller de la Generalitat (CiU), el alcalde de Barcelona (Joan Clos) y los alcaldes del Baix Llobregat afectados, entre ellos Montilla y Corbacho (PSC). Satisfechos y sonrientes habían tomado la mejor decisión para el pueblo. Ninguno estaba contento del todo pero habían llegado, finalmente, a un acuerdo..."

"En la foto no estaba Magdalena Álvarez, entonces consejera en la Junta de Andalucía. Los culpables de lo que hoy sucede son aquellos que no encontraron inconveniente alguno en que el AVE y el resto de la red ferroviaria, incluido cercanías, se interfierieran a su paso por Barcelona. En aquella foto están los verdaderos responsables."

Francesc de Carreras
LA VANGUARDIA (27.oct.07)