Bloomberg habla de ‘ciudades fantasma’ en España

@Fátima Martín
Cotizalia, 07/06/2007

Ciudades fantasma, como los PAUs de Sanchinarro y Las Tablas de Madrid, son la evidencia de una ‘superabundancia’ inmobiliaria tras una larga década de boom inmobiliario en España. Así comienza una información publicada ayer por la agencia internacional de noticias Bloomberg, que vuelve a tener por objeto el sobrecalentado mercado inmobiliario español.

Bloomberg destaca que en este país se construyeron más viviendas que en Francia y Alemania juntas el año pasado, mientras que la demanda anual ronda el 60% de lo construido. “El verdadero asesino del mercado inmobiliario es la inmensa sobreoferta”, afirma Gonzalo Bernardos, profesor de Economía en la Universidad de Barcelona, quien asegura que “los precios ya están cayendo de manera no oficial”. Bernardos estima que las residencias nuevas y usadas caerán en torno a un 20% de aquí a 2009.

Según la citada información, “los propietarios españoles deben encarar los mismos retos que los compradores en EEUU, que sufre su segundo año de depresión inmobiliaria. Los compradores españoles pueden tener incluso más riesgo de perder sus propiedades porque los precios de las casas están basadas en valoraciones más que en las ventas actuales, y los tasadores a menudo inflan los precios”.

“¿Por qué te preocupas si la valoración de los pisos no es exacta? Se corresponderá en el futuro”, es lo que le dicen los banqueros a Jesús Encinar, fundador del portal inmobiliario Idealista.com. Los precios de la vivienda usada en Madrid, ahora estancados, pueden empezar a caer en torno a un 0,2% en el primer cuarto del próximo año, dijo Encinar. “Madrid suele marcar tendencia respecto al resto del país, así que los precios en España probablemente comenzarán a caer a finales de 2008”, explica.

Aparte de las millonarias sumas que promotoras, constructoras y particulares adeudan a los bancos, las entidades españolas ofrecen hipotecas a 40 y 50 años. BBK, por ejemplo, también ofrece créditos por más del 100% de valor de tasación. Esto significa que incluso una caída modesta en la valoración de los pisos, unida a tipos de interés al alza, puede derivar en cuotas hipotecarias más altas. “El problema aquí es que la gente tiene la inquebrantable convicción de que los precios simplemente no pueden caer”, añade Encinar.

La información tampoco se olvida de los primeros síntomas de impago en los créditos. “Los bancos han prestado tremendas sumas a los promotores, que han usado el dinero para comprar suelo y ahora no pueden hacer otra cosa que construir casas en él para recuperar su dinero para pagar a su vez sus propios créditos”, alerta Pablo Gaya, director de análisis de Capital at Work Investment Partners en Madrid. “un ajuste brusco del mercado inmobiliario podría hacer incluso más duro para los promotores colocar su producto y puede llevar a retrasos en los créditos, lo que podría suponer un quebradero de cabeza para los bancos”, prosigue.
Además, los tipos de interés tienen un efecto inmediato más directo sobre las familias españolas, ya que el 96% de las hipotecas son variables, frente al 20% en Reino Unido y el 12% en EEUU. Ya en enero, la OCDE advirtió en un informe que el mercado español es el más vulnerable a una subida de tipos.

Bautista Soler pasa de vender nueve casas al mes a sólo una

BBVA estima que se construirán 700.000 viviendas en 2007, 100.000 menos que las terminadas en 2006. “Si las viviendas iniciadas continúan en estos niveles, las posibilidades de un crash de precios en el mercado inmobiliario español crecerán significativamente”, declara Mark Stucklin, director de Spanish Property Insight, una consultora inmobiliaria radicada en Barcelona.

Juan Bautista Soler, presidente del Valencia y dueño del Grupo Bautista Soler, vendía nueve casas al mes de septiembre a diciembre. Ahora, reconoce que sólo vende una mensual. “Nos estamos enfrentando a lo que podría ser una crisis importante”, reconoció en una entrevista en Londres. “Los promotores lo sienten y no entiendo cómo no lo dicen”, confiesa.

“Si hay problemas en el mercado de trabajo, entonces familias y bancos tendrán problemas”, dicen desde la patronal de promotores y constructores. Según los analistas de Ahorro Corporación, es necesaria una caída del 30% en la construcción de viviendas para equilibrar oferta y demanda. Una reducción de tal magnitud significaría una pérdida de cerca de 200.000 empleos.

La información de Bloomberg termina como empezó, haciendo referencia a los PAU’s de Madrid: “En Sanchinarro y Las Tablas, Esperanza Aguirre, presidenta de la Comunidad, inauguró el mes pasado la estación del metro. Nadie se apeó a la hora de la comida. Los españoles tradicionalmente van a casa para comer.”


Ghost Towns' Appear in Spain as Decade-Long Housing Boom Ends

2007-06-05 18:16 (New York)
By Sharon Smyth and Ricard Alonso
June 6 (Bloomberg)

Javier Usua and Ruth Graneda never gotout of the car when they visited Sanchinarro and Las Tablas, twoof Madrid's biggest new suburban developments. The concrete-blockbuildings and empty streets were all they needed to see.`
`We came to look at apartments but found ghost towns,'' saidUsua, a 27-year-old taxi driver. ``You'd need to drive miles for aloaf of bread or cigarettes and my girlfriend found it creepy andunsafe so we turned around and left.
''The abandoned developments are evidence of a housing glutthat will lead to Spain's first decline in home prices since atleast 1992, when the Housing Ministry started keeping records.Spanish builders constructed 750,000 houses and apartments lastyear, more than France and Germany combined, while annual demandruns about 60 percent of that, according to the Finance Ministry.
``The real killer of the housing market is the immenseoversupply,'' said Gonzalo Bernardos, a professor of economics atthe University of Barcelona. ``Prices are already unofficiallyfalling.
''New and existing house prices will drop by 20 percent fromnow through 2009, Bernardos estimates. The country built anaverage of 432,411 houses per year from 1996 to 2005, more thanFrance and the U.K. combined.
Spanish home prices have more than doubled since 1998,exceeding growth rates in the U.K. and Ireland, two of Europe'sfastest-growing markets. The increase has been driven by a drop ininterest rates to less than 3 percent from about 15 percent asSpain adopted the euro, household incomes that swelled as womenjoined the workforce, and a surge in vacation home purchases byNorthern Europeans, mainly Germans and Britons.

`Appraisals Are Poetry'
As prices start to decline, Spanish homeowners may face thesame challenges as buyers in the U.S., which is in the second yearof a housing slump. Falling prices may spur higher delinquenciesas buyers face difficulty refinancing. Spanish buyers may face aneven higher risk of losing their property because housing pricesare based on appraisals rather than actual sales, and appraisersoften inflate values.
``We live in a country where everybody understands thatappraisals are poetry,'' said Jesus Encinar, chief executiveofficer and founder of Idealista.com, a property Web site thattracks existing home prices in Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia.
``Bankers have said to me, `Why do you care if the appraisal isfake? It will be true in the future.'''The average house price in Spain was 276,300 euros ($370,670)in December, according to Sociedad de Tasacion, a propertycompany. That's up 107 percent since the same period of 2000.

Madrid Leads
Existing home prices in Madrid, now stagnant, may start tofall by 0.2 percent in the first quarter of next year, Encinarsaid. Madrid tends to lead the rest of the country, so pricesthroughout Spain probably will begin to drop by the end of 2008,he said.
Banks loaned 250 billion euros to developers last year, eighttimes more than in 1998, and 134.3 billion euros to constructioncompanies, data compiled by the Bank of Spain show.They loaned 544 billion euros to homebuyers, four times thevalue of mortgages in 1998. Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa has introduced50-year mortgages and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA hasstarted making 40-year mortgages. Bilbao Bizkaia also offers loansup to 100 percent of the appraised value. That means even a modestdecline in home values, combined with rising interest rates, mayresult in higher foreclosures.
``The problem here is that people have this unshakeableconviction that prices simply cannot fall,'' Encinar said.The amount of Spanish families' wealth tied up in property in2004 amounted to 521 billion euros, or 509 percent of grossdomestic product, according to the Bank of Spain. U.S. householdsheld $17.2 trillion of real estate, or 159 percent of GDP, in thesame period, according to the Federal Reserve.

Rising Defaults
Defaults on Spanish home loans in the first quarter were thehighest in at least four years, according to Standard & Poor's.The S&P Spanish RMBS delinquency index for loans backingresidential mortgage-backed notes increased by 23 basis points to1.75 percent during the first three months, S&P analysts wrote ina report on May 29. That compares with an index level of 0.7percent in March 2004.
``Banks have lent a tremendous amount to developers who usedthe money to buy land and now they have no choice but to buildhouses on it to recoup their money to repay their own loans,''said Pablo Gaya, head of analysis at Capital at Work InvestmentPartners in Madrid. ``Any sharp downturn in the housing marketwould make it even harder for developers to sell and may lead todefaults on loans, which would cause a headache for banks.''Rate increases have a more direct immediate effect on Spanishfamilies because 96 percent of mortgages in Spain are variablerate, compared with about 20 percent in the U.K. and 12 percent inthe U.S.

Economic Concerns
The Organization for Economic Cooperation said in a Jan. 23report that Spain's decade-long real estate bonanza boostedhousehold debt as a percentage of disposable income to 115 percentin the second quarter of 2006 from 45 percent in 1996, making theSpanish market among the most vulnerable to higher interest rates.Concerns about Spain's real estate market and economy arekeeping Usua and Graneda from buying right now.
The couple now lives in a two-bedroom apartment in thecentral Madrid neighborhood of La Prosperidad that belongs toUsua's father and uncles. They were hoping to purchase anapartment in Sanchinarro or Las Tablas to have their own place.The plethora of ``for sale'' signs and construction in bothareas also is scaring them off, Usua said.
``When rates rise and people who are already up to theireyebrows in debt find they can't pay their mortgages, the lastthing they are going to do is take a taxi, or eat out, and thataffects you, me and everyone,'' Usua said. The apartments theywere looking at cost from 300,000 euros to 400,000 euros.

`Flood of Speculators'
Just as developers profited from first-time buyers, theyalso have benefited from investors who bought property inanticipation prices would rise.
The result has been that builders were fooled about the truedemand, said Bernardos at the University of Barcelona.In Sanchinarro, Las Tablas and similar developments, ``aflood of speculators bought up apartments thinking they would makea killing as the boom continued,'' said Bernardos. ``Now bigdevelopers are competing with these very speculators for sales asthey flee the market.
''Olgar Del Corral, a 32 year-old plastic surgeon from Madrid,said she bought a second home because house prices ``alwaysrise.''
``It's clear that investing in a property is a much safer betthan putting money into the stock market for example where younever know what is going to happen,'' she said.

Housing Starts
BBVA, Spain's second-largest bank, estimates that 700,000 newhouses will be built in 2007, 100,000 less than the numberfinished in 2006.
``If housing starts continue at present levels, the chancesof a price crash in the Spanish property market will increasesignificantly,'' said Mark Stucklin, head of Spanish PropertyInsight, a real-estate consulting firm in Barcelona.Investors have already demonstrated their concern that thecountry's property boom is over. Shares of the nine largestpublicly traded real estate companies declined by an average 25percent in the past six months.
Metrovacesa SA, Spain's largest property company, offers1,000-euro discounts and an additional 600 euros per child duringpromotional festivals. Lubasa, a closely held real estate companyin Castellon, gives buyers vouchers worth 4,000 euros to spend indepartment stores.

Builders' Incentives
Grupo Pinar, a Madrid-based developer, tempts clients withthe offer of a Mercedes C-Class car or a 25,000-euro discount onthe price of some of its homes. Valencia Grupo 90 Inmobiliariasthrows in a free garage.
Juan Bautista Soler, president of Valencia Football Club andowner of private real estate company Grupo Bautista Soler, wasselling nine houses per month from September to December. Now, hesaid he's selling one per month.
``We're facing what could be a significant crisis,'' he saidin an interview in London. ``All developers are feeling it and Idon't know why they don't come out and say it.''The average value of approved Spanish mortgages fell 8.8percent in March to 162,265 euros from an average 177,916 euros inFebruary, the National Statistics Institute said last week on itsWeb site.
``If we do encounter problems in the labor market, thenfamilies and banks will have problems,'' said Enric Reyna,president of APCE, the Asociacion de Promotores Contructores yConstructores de Edificios de Barcelona y Provincias, in aninterview. ``Interest rates have to be kept at reasonable rates toprevent problems because banks can't extend mortgage repaymentsmuch more.''Job Losses?A 30 percent decline in house prices in two years would trim0.4 of a percentage point to 0.7 of a percentage point fromeconomic growth each year, International Monetary Fund economistJulio Escolano said in a May 18 report.According to analysts at Ahorro Corporacion, who estimatethat Spain only needs 400,000 to 450,000 new housing units peryear, a 30 percent drop in new housing starts is necessary tobalance supply with demand. A reduction of that magnitude wouldresult in about 200,000 job losses, the analysts estimated.In Sanchinarro and Las Tablas, Esperanza Aguirre, presidentof the regional government of Madrid, opened the first lightrailway stop last month. No passengers descended from or boardedthe bright red-and-blue train this week when it stopped at thestation during lunch time. Spaniards traditionally go home forlunch.``Not even God lives here,'' Usua said.