2012 – The year of the Spanish property buyer?
January 5th, 2012
With Europe still teetering on the brink of economic meltdown, and with the Euro under increasing pressure every day – how on earth could 2012 be the year that we see foreign buyers returning to Spanish property?
Far from wild speculation, 2011 actually did witness more foreign property buyers returning to Spain. There’s every reason to believe the trend will continue in 2012 and beyond – despite whatever fate awaits the Euro, Europe in general, or the Spanish economy in particular.
Some data
2011 was a record year for Kyero, as was 2010 before it. Kyero has been operational and a leader in marketing Spanish property to foreign buyers since 2003 – so it’s seen and survived the full cycle of boom and bust.
In terms of traffic, visitors and enquiries, Kyero has grown consistently since its 2003 launch – even through the 2008/9 recession. 2011 also witnessed an all-time-high in advertiser numbers and advertising revenue. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire ..
Kyero metrics
We track a whole handful of metrics to guage the market and how well Kyero is doing. Here are the highlights of Kyero’s performance in 2011 compared to 2010:
- Unique enquirers: +25%
- Enquiries: +24%
- Property page views: +28%
- Web referrals: +46%
- Raw visits: +29%
- Overall page views: +26%
- Unique visitors: +26%
In 2011, the overall increase for Kyero.com was +29%.
Encouraging this might be, but a dramatic increase in web traffic doesn’t neccessarily tally with an increase in property buyers.
Government data to the rescue
According to recent data from the Bank of Spain, and reported by El Mundo, foreign buyers surged by almost 28% in Q3 of 2011 compared to 2010.
The Spanish Ministry of Housing reported that the volume of property transactions by foreign buyers has now recovered to 2005 levels.
What’s going on?
It would be foolish to pretend that all was well in Europe, in Spain and in the Spanish property market. But, despite the obvious problems, foreign property buyers have already turned their attention to Spain in 2011, and will probably continue to do so in 2012 and beyond. Here’s why:
- Spanish house prices are still suppressed because the Spanish economy is still flat
- The recovering economies of other Eurozone countries is slowly transforming a ‘bunker’ mentality into a ‘cautious optimism’
- There’s no ‘safe’ alternative investment anywhere
- Spanish property is now cheap enough to appear ‘safe’ to foreign buyers
Kyero in 2012
We’re quietly optimistic that 2012 will be another record year, and that this will also be a bumper year for estate agents concentrating their marketing efforts on foreign property buyers.
To help them maximise their access to foreign property buyers, Kyero will be adding support for an additional 20 languages in 2012, and adding a whole host of additional language features to help agents communicate with buyers from all over the world.
