Spain’s Property Sector Fears Thousands of Estate Agent Closures With Loss of 35,000+ Jobs

Spain’s property sector fears thousands of estate agent closures with loss of around 35,000 jobs as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to property experts in the country.

PROPERTY analysts predict that around 25% of Spanish real estate agents will close down as a result of the coronavirus lockdown and crisis. “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,” confirmed property analyst at Spanish Market Insight, Mark Stücklin. “The last 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.”

Gerardo Duelo, Spain’s President of the General Council of Real Estate Agents (API) believes that small agencies comprising just a sales person with a telephone and a secretary, which were already struggling to make ends meet, “will close”. Stücklin’s analysis reveals that despite many new entrants in the property sector, sales haven’t increased, as there’s “not enough market for everyone”. “The lockdown will bring forward many business closures that would have happened anyway, and will concentrate them in certain areas, for example, where there are a lot of holiday homes, where sales will fall the most, and the recovery will be slowest,” confirms Stücklin.

Property market analysts like Stücklin believe “the sector will bounce back more professional, and in better health, as a result of the Covid-19 purge”. However he cautions, that “selecting which real estate agents to deal with will be more important than ever at a time when many are at risk of going to the wall”, particularly for people selling or buying property at this difficult time.