Housing market sinks by a third

THE housing market in the Balearics has plummeted by more than 36 percent over the past year, confirmed government registry offices yesterday.
The same sources said that the results also put the Islands in the spotlight as one of the regions of Spain where there was the least movement in property market during the third quarter of 2009. In July, August and September this year, there were only 2'340 transactions, 6.09 percent less than there had been in the same quarter in 2008.

Reports from the Official Property Registry revealed that for the first nine months of this year and the final three of 2008, there were only 8'788 buying and selling transactions in the Islands.

Statistics showed it was clear that the biggest downturn was in the second hand housing market. The 3'792 transactions recorded during this period was 42.25 percent less than during the previous 12 months.

And even in new properties, of which there were 5'007 transactions, the year-on-year figure was 30.42 percent less.
Looking at figures for just the third quarter of this year, transactions in the second hand home market fell by 2.44 percent to 1'059 and in new properties by 8.68 percent to 1'281 operations.