Mark Stücklin, writing in a blog on SpanishPropertyInsight, reports that a quarter of Spain’s real estate brokers could be put out of business by the Covid crisis.
Though agents can now conduct property viewings in some areas as Spain begins to relax Covid controls, two months of lockdown has taken its toll on an industry with erratic cash flows, and experts fear that 25% of Spanish real estate agents will close down as a result, with the loss of some 35,000 jobs.
“There were lots of small agencies that were just a sales person with a telephone and a secretary, which were already struggling to get to the end of the month, and those will close,” says Gerardo Duelo, President of the General Council of Real Estate Agents (API) in Spain. “The majority already had little business before the confinement began.”
There were 55,000 property brokers operating in Spain at the end of last year, according to official figures (INE) cited in the Spanish daily La Vanguardia.
An industry insider quoted in the same paper forecasts that 25% of them will be driven out of business by the coronavirus crisis, which will reduce turnover for the sector by between 22% and 29%.
Real estate agents in Spain provide jobs for 150,000 people and insiders forecast that some 35,000 agency jobs will go in this crisis.
The 2009 crisis was much worse, when real estate agents were decimated by the Spanish property crash, with 70% of agents wiped out and 180,000 jobs lost.
Who says it won’t be this bad over here?
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register
Have they heard of Agents Together ?
It does appear to have a worldwide remit so they should be able to access the free mentoring etc.
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register
it’ll be worse here, more like 35%, transactions will remain 45% down for at least 2 years.
You must be logged in to like or dislike this comments.
Click to login
Don't have an account? Click here to register