Spain

Over the last decade, Spain has established itself as a firm favourite for property buyers from Britain and elsewhere in Northern Europe. Of the 3.7 million holiday homes in Spain, 1.7 million are believed to belong to foreigners – at least 600,000 of them British. Spain is no longer the bargain basement destination it once was, however. Since the late 1990s, the country has experienced a property boom of such length and intensity that even the British and Irish markets have looked flat in comparison, with annual rises of more than 15%. No boom can go on for ever, and by 2005, there were signs of a slowdown, although prices still ended the year about 12% higher on average. This masked considerable regional differences: while the market in Barcelona has remained extremely strong, prices have actually fallen in some of the new developments on the Costa del Sol, with sentiment hit by some fairly spectacular building scandals. Spain remains popular with tourists, though, and the rental season, especially in the south, is long.

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