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United Kingdom Spanish home sales plunge 40.8 percent
Spanish home sales plunged 40.8 percent in the second quarter of 2011 from the same period a year earlier, the government said, as activity took a hit from expired tax incentives.
Sales had already tumbled 30.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the year.
Spain’s housing sector, still suffering from the fallout of the 2008 property bubble collapse, took a hit when tax deductions for property purchases expired January 1.
The government, which had pushed up value added tax on July 1, 2010, last month acted to boost sales by cutting VAT on new home purchases to four percent from eight percent until the end of this year.
From April to June, there were 90,746 home sales of which 33.7 percent were newly built.
There are an estimated 1.5 million unsold homes in Spain.