The buyer has long since ceased to have control in the real estate negotiations. When between 2012 and 2014 he entered through the door of a real estate agency, he did it in search of bargains and when he found a house that interested him, he put an offer of demolition on the table and waited quietly for the owner's need to sell to make the rest.
When nobody or almost nobody could buy a house because of the crisis, the high unemployment rate or the lack of financing, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of the families who were forced to sell theirs because of the impossibility of continuing to pay the mortgage to the bank and the fear of being evicted. The imperative need to sell led many owners to get rid of their homes for a price much lower than that had reached the boom, insufficient even, in many cases, to cancel their debts to the bank.
Whoever sold was doing it out of necessity, because each day his property was worth a little less and because with the money from the sale he could cancel the debt with the bank. Who bought, on the contrary, did it as an investment or because during the years of the boom had been waiting patiently for the real estate bubble burst to be able to buy much cheaper.
The current situation, however, is very different. In a bull market, the owners no longer have so much urgency to sell and the buyer, faced with the foreseeable rise in prices, especially in very specific areas of the Spanish geography, prefers to advance its purchase decision and avoid this future price increase. And in this new scenario, it is the owner who has the last word again.
There is no rush to sell.
And it is that, currently, in 2018, a decade after the real estate sector jumped through the air, there is no real need for sale. "The seller does not care to leave with a slightly higher price because in six months he knows that housing will be more expensive, and if he does not sell, he only has to lower the price little by little. Very cheap is in the cases of inheritance when, normally, the heirs want to sell as soon as possible and they do not care about earning 5,000 or 6,000 euros less per head ", acknowledges Jesús Duque, vice president of a real estate group.
In his opinion, the market is in a situation very similar to the one we had in 2005-2006, before it broke out into crisis. "It was good years for the sector, several rally exercises were chained, the same thing happens now, we have been raising prices for four years in a row, but I am worried that in some areas, prices have recovered up to 30% or more. 40% from 2013, when the market hit bottom, these large percentages are not justified by the rise in wages.The real economy is not in line with real estate prices.We are facing an evident real estate inflation ".
This renewed buyer appetite is reflected, day by day, in the official statistics and various reports that show the increase in purchases, the increase in the granting of mortgages and increases, increasingly widespread, of prices. But also in another indicator that allows measuring the health of the residential market. It is about the average time of sale of a house in Spain and that, at a national level has experienced a significant improvement. If in 2016 it took almost a year to find a buyer for a house, it currently takes about eight months.
The average time of sale of a house in Madrid is just 2.6 months compared to 6 in Barcelona.
Madrid, however, once again shows that the recovery goes several steps ahead. Whoever decides to put his house on sale, it only takes 2.6 months to find a buyer, when in 2015 it took more than double, which shows the enormous appetite for buying a house in the capital, a market, on the other hand , which is experiencing the highest bullish prices in all of Spain.
And it is that, as it happened in full boom, before the strong demand and the lack of supply, especially of new work, the seller returns to have the frying pan of the negotiation by the handle, which plays in favor of the price increases.
However, according to these experts, we are still far from seeing scenes like those that occur almost daily in their offices. When the floors flew from your hands. And, although there are very specific promotions where the appetite for buying is very strong, with long waiting lists, as Carlos Smerdou, CEO of Foro Consultores, acknowledges, the truth is that there is still no impulsive purchase decision - in large part because , unlike what happened ten years ago, there is no free credit bar, but it is quite thoughtful.
For us to get an idea, only 7% of those who actively seek home to buy acquires a home in less than a month. Half take between one and six months, while almost 20% spend more than a year, or even more.
No impulsive purchases, yet.
"What we are now noticing about what happened in the previous expansive cycle is that those who want to buy have first surveyed the market, they know exactly what type of home they can buy and where they have been discarded after consulting and, generally, who is interested in buying look for something above what they can afford, although they are aware that there are no bargains, like a few years ago, "says Jesús Duque.
However, the situation also varies greatly from one city to another. Madrid is undoubtedly the most active residential sector and is located at a distance from other cities such as Barcelona, where the political situation of the last year has taken its toll on the housing market. In fact, if in the third quarter of last year the average sales time stood at 3.4 months, in just twelve months it has been extended to six months, much higher than what it takes in Zaragoza (3.9 months) or Seville (5.1 months), where the shadow of recovery has arrived much later.
In other areas of the Spanish geography, they see the light at the end of the tunnel but have not managed to get out of it. In 12 provinces it still takes more than a year to find a buyer. The longest terms are located in Ourense, Cantabria and Salamanca.
Source: www.elconfidencial.com