3.4m empty homes: spain's black housing market
Sesena, Madrid, one of the Spain's most famous emty developments Photo: Besos y Flores
Spain is not the only one facing a wave of ghost houses. The figures from the Guardan show that more than 2 million homes are empty in both Italy and France, while even Germany's strong property market has 1.8 million vacant properties.
"It's incredible. It's a massive number," David Ireland, chief executive of the Empty Homes charity, which campaigns to make empty homes available to those who need them, told the newspaper.
"Homes are built for people to live in, if they're not being lived in then something has gone seriously wrong with the housing market."
Indeed, with 4.1 million homeless across the continent, the supply of empty homes is more than enough to house those without shelter.
"Governments should do as much as possible to put empty homes on the market," added Freek Spinnewijn, director of FEANTSA, a group of organisations tackling homelessness across Europe.
Spain's market is flooded more than most. Thanks to developments such as Polaris World launching just as the crisis began, 14 per cent of properties are vacant, with more than 7,000 of 20,000 homes in Torre-Pacheco, a holiday region between Murcia and the coast, empty. Repossessions of homes from cash-strapped residents are contributing to the problem.
Into that gap have stepped a wave of illegal landlords, who break into and then rent out repossessed and vacant properties. This "black housing market" lets people 'buy' a home for as little as €1,000, which they can own until they are issued with an eviction order.
"A few shameless people are taking advantage of the needs of the most poor to make a business out of it," Vicente Pérez, of the Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos de Madrid, told the Guardian.
With banks thought to be holding properties until the market has recovered and prices have stopped falling, calls continue for homes to made available for buyers. With unemployment still high, despite recording its first fall since the crisis, domestic buyers are often unable to afford to purchase a home. Who will buy the excess stock?
Enter international buyers. Indeed, foreign investors have been the silver lining to Spain's real estate cloud for several years, with low prices attracting buyers from overseas. As local demand slumps, foreign demand has spiked: 36,226 residential properties were sold last year to overseas buyers, according to the Property Register, a rise of 35 per cent compared to 2012.
Institutional investors are starting to invest now, too, as a report from PwC highlighted Spain and Ireland as top investment opportunities in 2014.
“This is just the start,” Mikel Echavarren, head of Irea, a real estate consultancy, told Spanish Property Insight.
“The funds have spent years looking at Spain without any deals materialising, but now they are here to stay. Last year was a turning point, where in an investment desert it began to rain.”
The surge in foreign demand has given renewed confidence to some in the industry. Indeed, last month, the valuation firm Tinsa predicted that the country's glut of unsold property could all be snapped up by 2017.
Until then, the black housing market continues.