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Spanish housing market slumps; 400,000 jobs at stake

With sales slumping, prices faltering and property developers despondent, Spain's housing market evidently failed to get the soft landing this year that the government and experts had predicted at the start of year.

Some experts are alarmist, some cautiously optimistic, but all agree that the sector is in crisis.

The issue is all the more important as the housing market makes up 7.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to figures from the BBVA bank. The construction industry as a whole employs 13 percent of workers.

And all this as Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is seeking a second four-year mandate in March general elections.

"There is a crisis in Spain's housing market," said Jesus Garcia de Ponga, the head of Metrovacesa, one of Spain's leading real estate companies.

Property developers, some of whom are also suffering a lack of capital due to the international subprime lending crisis, have sounded the alarm.

The G14 group, which represents the country's largest developers, says 400,000 jobs will be lost within two years due to the construction slowdown.

Studies by the BBVA bank are more reassuring.

"There is too much talk of disaster on this subject," BBVA chief economist Jose Luis Escriva said. BBVA continues to talk of a "soft landing" but still predicts 250,000 less workers in the construction industry next year.

But one thing is certain: sales are way down. Early this month, the office that registers property transactions noted a 12 percent drop between January and October.

The decline only accelerated throughout the year -- 8.9 percent in the first quarter, 11.5 in the second and 16 in the third.

And when sales slump, prices follow. A recent study by Deutsche Bank forecast that the average rise in house prices for the year would be identical to inflation, which was around 4 percent in the 12 months to last month.

This figure is far below that of recent years: 9.1 percent last year, 12.6 percent in 2005, and well over 150 percent for the period 1996 to last year.

For the new year, Deutsche Bank predicts a drop in prices of 2 to 8 percent.

Many blame the European Central Bank and its policies of monetary tightening, which have hurt Spanish borrowers as most of them have variable rates.

"The intensification of the process [of rate hikes] has progressively weakened the demand for housing, to which the sector, as usual, responded late," the BBVA study said.

With more choices for buyers, agents were forced to push harder to get a sale.

"The situation is terrible" for the whole property sector, said Javier Sierra of the RE/MAXx agency. "The smallest agencies are suffering" and "the secondary housing market has practically stopped."

Looking to the future, he noted "two criteria that are traditionally bad for the real estate -- interest rates and unemployment."

The first have sharply increased, but the return of inflation in the eurozone will make the ECB hesitant to reverse the trend.

Unemployment passed 8 percent in Spain in the third quarter.
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