"Hipotecas" means Mortgages in Spanish, while "tipo" means interest rates.
Posted on 04/19/2006 3:13:29 PM PDT by economist-student
Immigrants are emerging as a powerful new force in the Spanish economy, boosting demand for new housing, which in turn is sustaining the country’s long construction boom, according to analyst reports.
“There is no risk of a property crash in Spain in the short or medium term thanks to new demand generated by immigrants,” says Angel Berges, a partner at Analistas Financieros Internacionales, a Madrid consultancy. Mr Berges estimates immigrants will buy some 170,000 homes in Spain this year – almost one quarter of total demand for new houses.
Nevertheless, it warned that Spain’s “bricks and mortar” growth model was not sustainable in the medium to long term. It believes economic growth is too dependent on construction and services, “two sectors with low productivity and little exposure to international competition”, the Flores de Lemus Institute says.
High inflation, forecast at 3.5 per cent for 2006 and 3 per cent in 2007, was eroding Spain’s competitiveness and worsening its trade deficit, the institute said. Spain’s current account deficit, the second highest in the world in absolute terms after that of the US, according to the International Monetary Fund, will reach €63bn ($76.8bn, £43.6bn), or 7.5 per cent of gross domestic product, in 2006, from €61bn last year, according to the Flores de Lemus Institute.
The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is more pessimistic and places Spain’s current account deficit at 8.9 per cent of GDP in 2006 and 9.8 per cent in 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.ft.com ...
I agree. Portugal is much better suited to sustain the property boom, especially with so many folks from the US and Canada retiring/snow-birding in the Azores...
Great future for undertakers, and insurance investigators.
I'll tell you, in Spain having sex it's not a sin, it's a miracle...
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