Credibility in Spain, but not in UK

With car sales, mortgage loans and shares plummeting and jobless and house repossessions hitting the roof, it’s hard to see what the McBroon Government has achieved in the last six months that offers hope and salvation to any sane, rational UK citizen …

There are still no loans on offer for hard-pressed businesses and families as McBroon minion ministers fill our screens with platitudes and assurances they are going the extra mile to get cash into the economy – despite the billions they have poured into useless, not fit for purpose, banks.

It seems no-one has confidence in their utterances and, as a direct result, we are all keen to hang onto to every quid we have, despite the good shopping deals in the High Street, malls and showrooms.

McBroon himself has quietly abandoned his hilarious prediction that Britain was so well placed in the global recession that we would be starting recovery from mid 2009 and is now wasting his time trying to provide normal service to the world economy. What would impress more would be for him to get the vital loan cash into the British economy.

Meantime, there are reports that increasing numbers of Brits are voting with their feet and investing in property in Italy, France and mainly in Spain where prices are better than even the current rock bottom UK level and mortgages are available.

They will be encouraged by the most accurate figures on property prices in Spain that have ever been released.

Not the laughable stats from the Spanish Ministry of Housing nor the National Institute of Statistics, who until recently claimed that house prices were still rising, but from Tinsa, the valuation company with 3,000 highly trained valuers on the frontline of Spanish housing every day.

Tinsa accurately track prices to show that at the end of 2007, homes were still rising 5% year on year, but that in 2008 they dropped by 10% as the world economies went into freefall. Tinsa's reports are not focused on the actual price of a particular property - but on the overall trend in house prices. On the Brit-buying Costas prices are down 12.6% compared with 2007 and there are Spanish bank repossessions available.

Whatever their methodology is, it seems to be working well and other experts like myself are now convinced Tinsa price tracking is the most accurate and credible.

There is only one buy-direct, full service website in the Spanish property sector that publishes Tinsa valuations on individual properties against the asking price and in many cases supplies the 25 page valuations as part of the view trip. This vital, independent paperwork is as additional assurance and confidence builder to UK and north European buyers, puzzled by the many “big discount” claims of various vendors.

Realiable statistics, support valuations, published honestly - that’s another big step towards fuller transparency in the week when the EU has attacked Spain for lack of it where foreign buyers are concerned and is threatening financial sanctions if things don’t improve.