real estate sector

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Spain’s housing market at cruise speed

MADRID | By The Corner Team | Spanish real state sector stands at its adjustment final stage is an oft-repeated mantra in the country’s analysts firms. After five years of hard recession,  some signs of slow recovery are increasingly growing. Last outstanding figure is year-on-year upturn of +59.2% in properties’ selling and buying in January, as reported by Spain’s General Council of Notaries.  National housing market would become an attractive investment opportunity again in 2014.







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“Europeans are not productive enough to defend their living standards”

Famous for his provocative views on international economics and China’s rise, Andy Xie is an independent economist who predicted the Asian bubble in 1997. Based in Shanghai, he is a former Morgan Stanley star chief Asia-Pacific analyst. We interviewed him for our summer interviews on China’s challenges, the eurodrama and his forecast for the future. For Mr. Xie, Wall Street bankers are viewed in China as “a bunch of corrupt…


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Buy more brick for a worst price

CAPITAL MADRID, José Sánchez Mendoza.–  Pay more, almost double, but with a comfortable loan that covers all or most of the amount. It’s a win-win situation, don’t you think? Though it may seem, this is not the lamp seller in a Moroccan bazaar’s talking but the candy that banks put in front of consumers to get rid of the housing stock that hampers their balance sheets. According to a study…


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Bankia accelerates real estate asset sales ahead of bailout

MADRID | Habitat Bankia, BFA Group-Bankia’s property company, announced it has sold over 2,400 real estate assets between January and June of this year. The value of these operations amounts to €230 million. These units from foreclosed assets and the pace of divestment reflects an increase of 17% year on year. In a market environment characterised by continued declines in sales and purchases, the decision of downsizing its real estate…


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Write-downs take 80pc of CaixaBank’s profits, push core capital to 13pc

BARCELONA | CaixaBank reported Friday a poor attributed January to March net income of €166 million as a result of provisions enforced by the Spanish government, set to clean up the balance sheets of the country’s banking sector. For the Catalan entity, the figure means an 80.1-percent cut down comparing to the first quarter of 2011 and bears the scars of large write-downs of €3.735 billion. CaixaB ank said that, as…