The Government will kick-off with a press conference at the Spanish Embassy on May 4th to discuss benefits of Spain property reforms and opportunities for UK investors seeking to buy homes in Spain.
The road show, which will start in London on the same day, will attempt to promote now as a being a good time to buy property in Spain, with bargain priced homes available nationwide, particularly in many of the holiday home destinations which are traditionally popular with Brits.
The Spanish Government is desperate to reduce the existing glut of homes in Spain, with an estimated one million unsold properties currently on the market.
The Spain property market is important to the country’s struggling economy, due its part reliance on the construction sector.
An improvement in the Spain property market would both boost the economy and create a number of new jobs in the building industry.
The road show will later move on to France, Germany, Holland, Sweden and Russia.
In the official press release issued on 14 April 2011 in Madrid by the Ministerio de Fomento Sr. Blanco said:
“The Road Show will highlight the strengths of our economy, transparency and legal certainty of our planning legislation.
It is a good time to carry out this pioneering initiative because the markets that have the potential to invest in second homes are recovering and we must revive the holiday housing market ‘to speed up the digestion of stock’
In selecting the countries to be visited in this first round of Road Shows we have taken into account variables such as the volume of house purchases in Spain that its citizens have made in recent years, its investment in general in our country, the situation of their respective economies and the potential for increased investment in our second homes market.
The United Kingdom is the first international destination for this first round of Road Shows because, according to the latest data available, its citizens and investors in 2009 accounted for 31.5% of foreign buyers of property in Spain.
The road-show has 2 phases; the first one targets trade and institutional investors, followed by a later phase aimed at the general public offering a selection of new developments that meet certain legal and quality criteria.
Talking about this initiative in a recent radio interview Blanco said he is “not an estate agent,” which might have put some peoples’ minds at rest.
“It’s about stimulating sales in target markets and that is what the Government of Spain is going to try and do,” said Blanco. “It’s good for the Spanish economy, can help the recovery and, as a consequence, help create jobs in the construction sector.” Banks and developers have voiced their support.
