We continue having good news in the real estate market of Marbella & Benahavis: 2014 seems to be again the best year by number of closed transactions after the crash in 2008 and, although we do not have yet the information of the fourth quarter, the number of sold properties may be similar to that of 2007. Those goods numbers are not only for Marbella but also for Benahavis. The favorable tendency that showed up in 2013 has been confirmed in 2014.
However, as we can see below, the inventory or number of properties in the market keeps on going up. Seems that, as there is a general sense that the market is better, more owners are putting up their properties for sale after waiting a number of years to do so. That may be one of the reasons after the almost non existing increase in the prices we have been seen recently. The price index may have reached the bottom but it is not showing any tendency of recovery. As a general comment, my sense is that the buyers are not showing any feeling of urgency when buying.
They still do not think that they can lose a property they like if they wait some time to take a decision or even they use that waiting time to show a strong negotiating position in front of the seller. In the US real estate market they use an index to see if they are in a buyer’s or seller’s market: the number of months required to sell the full existing inventory at the actual sale’s pace. If they are in a seller’s market, the number of months to sell the inventory is less than 5 and if they are in a buyer’s market that number is higher than 7. That number at Marbella for the last year is 15 that means that, using those American standards, we are still in a buyer’s market but improving from the 17,7 of 2013.
