Spain's property market suffers meltdown

Spain's once-booming property market is in freefall, official statistics have revealed for the first time.

The announcement that house sales had plunged has dashed government hopes for a "soft landing" in the sector that has driven the Spanish economy for more than a decade.

The buying and selling of homes fell by 27 per cent in January compared with the same period last year, Spain's National Statistical Institute (INE) announced yesterday. The collapse coincided with a 25 per cent fall in the granting of mortgages, the biggest drop since 2004. The size of individual mortgages has also fallen, by nearly 4 per cent, as providers fear for the security of their loans.

Shares in Spain's heavily-indebted property giant Colonial rebounded on Tuesday

Colonial's shares had lost more than 23 percent on Thursday, the day after a takeover bid by the Investment Corporation of Dubai fell apart when the sovereign wealth fund failed to reach an agreement with creditor banks to refinance the Spanish group's massive debt.

Colonial, the second-biggest Spanish property group which own offices and malls in Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, was more than 8.9 billion euros (13.8 billion dollars) in debt at the end of 2007.

Need for real estate authors from spain

Hi from Tam Tree , hope you like the spain real estate news blog.

I need authors from spain to help me coverage the areas of Madrid valensia and Barcelona .

Please send email if you like to participated in this effort. Thanks a lot !

tamtree@gmail.com

Colonial Shares Slump After Banks Block Sale of Unit

Investment Corp. bid for the Colonial unit on March 11, a week after its cash-and-securities offer for all of Colonial was rejected. A slump in the Spanish real-estate market caused Colonial to lose 4.8 billion euros of its value in six months and made it a more attractive target.

Colonial owes 6.3 billion euros to banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Eurohypo AG and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. The company and its biggest shareholders have accepted the offer by Investment Corp., a sovereign wealth fund owned by the government of the Persian Gulf emirate.

The Dubai fund said yesterday that ``if there's any possibility of an agreement with Colonial, apart from the terms contemplated in the March 11 agreement, ICD will consider it.''

Investors craving property in Spain should wait out slump

Spanish property has long been favored by second home owners from all reaches of the world. The Southern European country was the second most popular destination for international vacationers in 2006, behind France, according to the World Tourism Organization (WTO). But after the Spanish property market’s recent downswing, is Spain still the attractive vacation home locale it once was? For now, those interested in Spanish property investments may be better off waiting to see what the market does.

Spain is home to more than 40 million people and covers a total area of 504,782 square kilometers. The Mediterranean Sea flows alongside the country’s southern and eastern coasts, making these areas particularly desirable to holidaymakers and second home owners.

Spain's embattled real estate sector received more bad news

"In 2007, the total number of property transactions was 788,518, a drop of 13.93 per cent over 2006," the CRE, an organisation that collects data on property transactions, said in a report.

The largest drop was in sales of older homes, which saw a decline of 15.05 percent, compared to 12.41 percent in new properties, it said.

In the fourth quarter, the decline was even more pronounced, with transactions plummeting 21 percent from 203,993 in 2006 to 161,906 in the same period in 2007.

Spain bank slashes property lending as crisis looms

One of Spain's biggest private savings banks has slashed lending to property developers which are caught in a looming housing crisis and barely able to sell land or property, its head of property lending told Reuters on Tuesday.

Jose Aguilar Martin, head of real estate at Seville-based Cajasol, said the bank was not lending to firms building holiday homes on the coast nor to property developers planning to build in areas designated as 'rural'.

Investment Corp. of Dubai (ICD) will buy Spanish real estate giant Inmobiliaria Colonial SA,

After a few days of on-and-off negotiations, it appears that the Investment Corp. of Dubai (ICD) will buy Spanish real estate giant Inmobiliaria Colonial SA, though as of Thursday afternoon, no deal had been definitively announced.

It is also possible, according to a report yesterday afternoon by Reuters, that the ICD will only buy the rental property unit of Colonial, leaving the development unit to the company's main shareholders.

However, a serious downturn in the Spanish real estate market, led by slumping residential sales, has left Colonial with about 8.6 billion euros worth of debt after a number of recent acquisitions by the company.

GE Real Estate Iberia dropped out of the competition for Colonial

Spanish property firm Colonial announced it enjoyed a substantial increase in profits in 2007, as the firm faced an acquisition deadline of today from Investment Corp. of Dubai.

Colonial said net profit jumped last year to $129.7 million from $26.1 million, due to its acquisition of Spanish mall developer Riofisa, and a nearly $840 million increase in the value of its assets.

Reckoning looms for two Spanish real estate giants

Spain's ailing real estate sector faces one of its toughest tests to date, as time runs out for two of its biggest companies in make-or-break talks with potential saviors.

Inmobiliaria Colonial SA (COL.MC) and Habitat Inmobiliaria SA are both working against the clock to avoid bankruptcy. Their challenges also mirror the difficulties of companies that took up loans for string of pricey acquisitions before the Spanish red-hot real estate market soured.