Swine Flu fears have disrupted a much needed boost to the Spanish property market by putting off international investors who were set to attend Palma property Auctions. The auctions have had a series of cancellation from overseas buyers owing to growing fears about the flu.
Palma Property Auctions said to be one of Spain’s biggest holiday home auctioneers – said rising swine flu fears among clients had forced it to shelve its eagerly-awaited summer sale.
The National Statistics Institute show that the Spanish property market has seen the number of houses sold fall to 32.2 percent in May to 34,012 units compared with a year earlier, marking the 17th consecutive month of decline
Hope was raised by bargain hunters from Germany that the low prices and value for money was going to help turn the situation around.
“We had nine concrete cases of people who called us to say they wanted to have a look at a property and possibly take part in the auction, but they were not going to because of swine flu,” Daniel Westerlund, a spokesman for Palma Property Auctions, told Reuters.
He said his auction house was thriving despite the well-documented Spanish housing market collapse because buyers and sellers wanted fast and efficient ways to transact non-distressed real estate.
While swine flu may have forced Westerlund’s buyers to flee, the underlying problem in the market is a lack of investor confidence.
Meanwhile good news for Spain’s two largest banks, Banco Santander and BBVA, which have diversified abroad and reported decent second-quarter results this week,
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