Thursday 18 August 2016

Property, Economy and Tourism All Up For Spain




Many industries tend to only focus on the positives and ignore the negatives when the time comes for them to report their news. When it comes to Spain, and especially the property industry in the country, this optimism is only fair.
Spain is the best place to live in Europe

The Spanish property market has been in a pretty bad place for the past several years but the past 24 months have been great for the industry. Spanish property prices reached their lowest point before slowly climbing back up. Mortgages were being approved more and the rates were fairer and foreign investors entered the market once more, along with a rise in domestic demand that was fuelled by the recovering job market and economy.

The past few months in particular have been great for the country as it looks like there’s nothing but good news for the real estate industry in Spain. It’s expected that property prices will continue to rise for at least the next five years. The only potential pitfall was the Brexit vote and, even though Britain voted leave, the Spanish economy, real estate industry, and especially tourism industry was barely affected.

Last week figures from the EU statistics agency Eurostat showed that Spanish property prices were on the up at a faster rate than the Eurozone average. The Economy Minister would also confirm that of the €22 billion in foreign money that was spent in Spain in 2015, a whopping one-third of it was spent on construction.

If this wasn’t good enough the Economy Minster Luis de Guindos would revise his 2016 forecast for the Spanish economy on Sunday. He is now suggesting that the Spanish GDP could rise by 2.9% this year, just above the 2.7% he originally forecast.

De Guindos put this elevated estimate down to macroeconomic projections which should be implemented before the next government institutes a full budget. He is also confident about 2017 and suggests that even if the Eurozone slows down it will not affect Spain much and that the country should still see a GDP growth of around 2.4%.

Another piece of great news for Spain came from the Institute of National Stastistics (INE). They reported over the weekend that the number of tourists visiting AndalucĂ­a over the past 12 months had increased by 18.1% year-over-year.

This increase is the highest out of all the autonomous communities in Spain and gave further proof, if any were needed, that the Costa del Sol area is in for a bumper summer this year. In May alone around one million people visited the region. This summer is expected to break the record set last year with an estimated 7 million people arriving.

While most of Europe seems to be facing the gloom of a post-Brexit EU or the doom of terrorism Spain is looking bright and cheery this summer and it’s not hard to see why with the wonderful climate and Mediterranean lifestyle and the cost of living in spain being so good. Its no wonder why so many Northern Europeans want to move to spain permanently.