The state of the real-estate sector is not equal across the country. While some areas are deserted with barely a property purchaser in sight, in others prospective buyers are clamouring to get a look in at what’s on offer. Some areas have thousands of empty properties for sale, and finding an empty house or apartment to buy in others is like looking for gold dust.
In Madrid and Barcelona, for example, new properties that are just being launched onto the market in ‘prime’ zones, and which are selling at today’s market prices, are attracting serious numbers of interested buyers and are quickly being snapped up.
The same day that a new block of flats in Calle Entença in Barcelona first went on sale, a queue of around 100 potential buyers flocked to the estate agent’s in charge of sales. The 56 spacious apartments, which were priced at around 320,000 euro each, sold out in ten hours.
The secret, says the agent, is that the prices were adapted to today’s market, which translates as them being cheap enough for the average person to be able to buy, particularly in those areas.
In some parts of Barcelona, a 2-bedroom 60sq m apartment could cost you over 320,000 euro. Many new properties are now being marketed at extremely cheap prices for the area.
A similar occurrence also took place in Madrid. One estate agent sold 70% of its 212 apartments off-plan as soon as they appeared on the market.
The agent explained that these days the chances to buy a new build are few and far between, yet many people would much prefer a new property over a second-hand one and so there is a lot of competition to obtain one. The prices of these new builds in Madrid ranged between 230,000 and 609,000 euro.
Another company, Don Piso, has also had similar success in Barcelona with his new builds, selling 80% since they were put on the market in July. The managing director of the company was taken aback when purchasers thanked him for launching affordable new builds onto the market that they could afford to buy. A 100sq m apartment was being sold for just over half a million euro in Barcelona, which for Barcelona is quite inexpensive.
One Barcelona agent explained that in 2012 affordable property became scarce in the city, and demand considerably outweighed the number of offers. If this trend continues, prices could rise substantially in these major cities, making them much more expensive than in other parts of the country.
Source: www.expansion.com, www.habitaclia.com
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