Foreign purchases in Spain have made a surprisingly strong recovery after the pandemic-induced restrictions were lifted. Indicators related to purchase intent suggest that this positive trend will continue in the short term, especially among the German and Nordic populations. The long-term outlook for foreign demand is also promising considering the demographic trends in Europe: the imminent retirement of a large generation of Europeans points to a significant increase in potential demand, especially between 2026 and 2030. Although Spain has considerable strong points to attract this demand, such as the high competitiveness of its tourism industry and the country’s perceived safety, the importance of creating an attractive regulatory and fiscal environment, whilst also adopting appropriate housing policies to mitigate its impact on the local population, should not be underestimated.
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The real estate market is one of the main channels through which monetary policy is passed on to the real economy. Tighter financial conditions are feeding through to mortgage interest rates and are cooling down the demand for housing. Given the notable tightening of monetary policy over the past year in many of the advanced economies, in this article we document the change in trend in international real estate markets and analyse the extent of the adjustment that may lie ahead.
The retail trade is one of the Spanish economy’s main service sectors. An atomised sector, it is particularly labour-intensive with a widespread presence throughout the country.
The collapse of tourism in Spain in the wake of COVID-19 has pushed the tourism industry to undertake major price adjustments and the hotel sector has been the greatest exponent of this trend. According to data from the National Statistics Institute, the price per room per day charged by hotels in the summer of 2020 was 16% lower than the previous year. However, this huge price cut does not seem to have played a decisive role in reviving demand in some regions. The change in travel preferences brought about by the pandemic has meant that tourists have opted for nearby, familiar and less congested destinations, focusing less on price and thereby limiting the success of big reductions in hotel prices.
Spain’s automotive sector is trying to find its place in the new global ecosystem, having overcome the adverse environment of recent years, marked by the international supply problems affecting essential inputs such as microchips and semiconductors, as well as increases in prices and interest rates.
Although manufacturing is not among the sectors hardest hit by the crisis, the COVID-19 shock occurred within a context of a prolonged weakness in the sector, not only in Spain but in Europe as a whole. After the initial harsh adjustment, brief and uneven across the various branches of activity, the sector quickly picked up again, approaching its pre-pandemic levels of activity and employment. The outlook for 2021 and 2022 is favourable, driven especially by exports and the investments made via the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (RTRP). Recent disruptions in global supply chains, caused by global transportation bottlenecks and component shortages, will have a limited, temporary impact.
One of the determining factors of the economic scenario is the impact of the ECB’s interest rate hikes on the consumption and investment decisions taken by economic agents. In this article, we examine the financial position of the different branches of Spain’s manufacturing industry in an attempt to determine to what extent they’re exposed to this tightening of financial conditions.
In the course of 2021 we have seen that, in the wake of the pandemic, a misalignment has emerged in the real estate sector between a demand that has recovered very quickly and a supply that is more dependent on structural factors and therefore continues to lag behind. As a result of this misalignment, house prices have started an upward trend which may continue to some extent in the coming quarters as a result of higher production costs in the sector and problems with the supply of certain raw materials. Nevertheless, in the medium term, as new supply enters the market and tensions in global supply chains ease, prices should return to a growth rate that is more in line with the trend in household income.
The situation of the tourism sector improved considerably during the summer months, outperforming the projections of many of the companies in the industry.
The Spanish economy grew by 5.0% in 2021, a large figure by historical standards but slightly below expectations, considering that GDP growth rates closer to 6.0% had been forecast at the beginning of the year. Several factors, both internal and external, have moderated the strength of this economic recovery. Among the internal factors is the somewhat slower than expected implementation of the NGEU programme, leading to a modest recovery in investment. External factors include higher energy costs and problems in global supply chains, both of which have been considerably aggravated by the war in Ukraine.
At this point in the pandemic, no-one is in any doubt that the economic scenario largely depends on how the health situation will develop. After a period of relative normality during the summer, a large number of European countries have had to step up restrictions on people’s movements and business activity. The economic impact of this second wave is considerable, although clearly less than the effect of the strict lockdowns imposed in Q2. This situation has worsened the economic outlook for the beginning of 2021, although the outlook for the spring is more promising with hopes being placed on the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine and other measures to help strengthen the health strategy (such as the low-cost, rapid testing of large numbers of the population).
Activity in Spain’s real estate market is recovering from its extraordinary slump during the first lockdown. In Q3 2020, house sales and new building permits recovered much of the ground lost, a positive trend we expect to consolidate in 2021. Moreover, the impact of the crisis on house prices has been relatively moderate so far, although we expect these will continue to adjust in the latter part of 2020 and the first half of 2021. In particular, CaixaBank Research’s new house price forecasting models at the level of province, based on large amounts of information (big data) and applying machine learning techniques, predict that house prices will fall in 7 out of 10 Spanish provinces in 2021 and grow very moderately in the rest.
However, it is important to remember that the economic impact of COVID-19 is huge and the effects of the pandemic on the sector will take time to disappear completely. The Recovery Plan for Europe, or Next Generation EU (NGEU), allocated a substantial sum of 750 billion euros, will be decisive in helping to boost the recovery. One of the EU’s main targets, which this recovery plan aims to support significantly, is the ecological transition to become climate-neutral by 2050. In the EU, buildings are responsible for emitting about 40% of the gases that cause global warming. The involvement and commitment of the construction industry is therefore essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the agreed targets, while more energy-efficient «smart» buildings also support another of the Commission’s key targets: digital transition.
These European funds represent a unique opportunity to modernise Spain’s economy, which will receive around 72 billion euros in non-refundable transfers between 2021 and 2026, equivalent to 5.8% of its GDP in 2019. About 6% of the European NGEU funds will be aimed at renovating housing, tripling public investment in this area. In particular, the government plans to recondition 500,000 homes between 2021 and 2023. This target, if achieved, would be very positive for the sector but it is highly ambitious since it requires multiplying the current reconditioning rate by six in just three years.
In addition to renovations, another priority for housing policy over the coming years is the improvement of social housing. The severe economic and social impact of the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need to provide a large number of rented social housing to resolve the current shortage and be able to ensure the most vulnerable sections of the population have somewhere to live. Policies that should drive a green, social and digital recovery.
Climate change and the struggle to prevent it pose enormous challenges for agrifood production in Spain. In turn, improving the sustainability and resilience of the sector will be key to achieving the environmental targets set out in the European Green Deal. Agri-environmental indicators show that, despite some progress in recent years, the sector needs to tackle significant aspects, such as reducing the use of chemical pesticides, fertilisers and antimicrobials in agriculture, as well as improving animal health and welfare, increasing efficiency in the use of energy and water resources, promoting food consumption that is more sustainable and healthier and reducing food loss and waste, fostering a circular economy. The new CAP, with eco-schemes as its key measure, and the Next Generation EU funds will support the sector’s green and digital transition.
The initiation of the ECB’s monetary policy normalisation process has led to an acceleration in house prices, especially in markets with a significant mismatch between insufficient supply and dynamic demand. The economies in which real prices have increased the most in the last year and a half, and where the residential markets are showing signs of more significant overvaluation, include Portugal, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Netherlands and Estonia. In contrast, the markets of large economies such as Germany, Sweden, France and Luxembourg remain overvalued, but have corrected the strong price growth they experienced in the decades leading up to the pandemic, reducing signs of overheating.
Historically, and in general terms, increases (or decreases) in consumption go hand in hand with larger increases (or decreases) in consumer credit. This relationship is particularly close in the case of durable goods, which are the most frequently financed given that they tend to be larger expenses.
El endurecimiento de las condiciones financieras, la intensificación de la crisis energética y las primeras señales de enfriamiento de los indicadores de consumo son las principales causas de esta nueva revisión del escenario. Nos lo explica en detalle Clàudia Canals, quien también repasa las claves de la coyuntura y del dossier de este mes, “Europa en clave energética: de la guerra a la transición climática”.
Nuestro economista sénior Josep Mestres participó en un webinar organizado por FUNCAS y el Capítulo Español del Club de Roma para debatir sobre la desigualdad y sus consecuencias económicas y sociales. En él presentó los resultados de las investigaciones llevadas a cabo por CaixaBank Research a partir de datos internos de CaixaBank, así como la reciente publicación del portal de Economía en tiempo real (https://realtimeeconomics.caixabankresearch.com).