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Updated Two-Bedroom Apartment in Barcelona
$850,000 (750,000 EURO)
This is a two bedroom apartmentBarcelona’s Sant Antoni district features an updated interior illuminated by multiple exteriors, including a rare 430-square-foot terrace in the center of the city, with zones dedicated to dining, sunbathing, and laundry.
Carlos Cossio, senior consultant at listed Engel & Völkers, said the house’s “majestic, plastered and preserved ceilings”, as well as the mix of texture and color “enhance the original elements of the house, while at the same time presenting a new design approach.”
Located on the second floor of a 1900 building, the approximately 1,500 square meter apartment is reached by elevator. Past the foyer, the glass doors to the left open into a living room with quiet, dusty green walls, ornate plasterwork, and two pairs of French doors that open onto a balcony that runs the length of the room. To the right is a large modern kitchen and dining area with doors to the patio. The kitchen’s original tiles were preserved and remodeled during a complete renovation in 2018 and 2019, where iron radiators and double-glazed windows were restored and central air conditioning was added.
A wide corridor leads to the family rooms of the house. Of the two bedrooms, the smaller one, with a palette of dove gray and bright yellow, accesses a hall bathroom. The larger bedroom on the right features abstract geometric wallpaper, a built-in wardrobe along two walls, and an en-suite bathroom with marble tile walls. The bedrooms share a shaded section and private terrace with barbecue area.
There is also access to the building’s storage room and communal roof terrace.
Sant Antoni in Barcelona’s Eixample district is home to the famous Mercat de Sant Antoni, a large covered market in an 1882 building. Plaça Catalunya and Barcelona’s Gothic cathedral and two metro stops on lines 1 and 2 are within walking distance. Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport is approximately 16 km away.
market overview
Tine Mathiassen, founder and manager of Casamona Real Estate, said that Barcelona, the coastal capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, has not seen housing prices and rents rise as fast as other major European cities in the past decade. , a Barcelona agency that caters to foreign buyers.
Faced with a housing shortage, the Catalonian government has passed a rent control law in 2020 that effectively discourages investors from buying and encourages landlords to list their homes for sale, specifically in the city centre, Mathiassen said. Then the pandemic came to thwart tourism, which severely reduced the pool of buyers and made it more difficult for rental properties to profit.
Colliding factors have made Barcelona a tougher sell for investors than in past years. “I think sellers have a hard time accepting that prices have dropped,” Ms. Mathiassen said. Meanwhile, potential buyers are worried about rent ceilings: “They are not ready to pay more for these apartments.”
Maria Larsson, CEO of Larsson Estate, a Barcelona-based boutique agency, said the city is still “very attractive” to foreign buyers who see real estate as a long-term investment. He added that the Spanish and Catalonian governments, the Spanish constitutional crisis in 2017 and 2018, in which Catalonia fought for independence, deterred foreign buyers more than any other development.
Sales in the wider province of Barcelona have bounced back since the dark early days of the pandemic. The Spanish Association of Land Registrars reported an average of 14,450 home sales per quarter in the province in 2021, up from 11,000 in 2020 and 13,794 in 2019.
But prices in the city struggled to keep up. According to a report by mid-2018 asking price for secondhand properties was about $460 per square foot. Barcelona City Counciland finished 2021 at $415 per square foot – a drop of about 10 percent.
According to data compiled by idealistThe average price of a house in the province of Barcelona in the third quarter of 2021, a leading online real estate platform in Southern Europe, was about $280 per square meter, 47 percent higher than Spain’s national average.
Ms Larsson said prices in the Ciutat Vella district (“old town”), including the Barceloneta neighborhood, have dropped as much as 20 percent since the start of the pandemic in areas once favored by tourists.
Ms. Larsson and Ms. Mathiassen said prices are probably bottoming out. “I can’t see you falling,” said Miss Mathiassen.
Mohammad Butt, Barcelona office director for Lucas Fox, an international luxury agency, estimates that prices in the luxury market have recovered by an average of 7 to 8 percent citywide in the last 12 to 18 months. “We had a very, very strong 2021, not far from our results in 2019, our record year in company history,” said Mr Butt. “We were surprised at how quickly the market recovered.”
Lucas Fox’s use of virtual property tours has helped sustain remote sales from foreign buyers, even during times of lockdown and restricted travel, he said. Specializing in the foreign market, the company sold more homes to local residents due to Spain’s lower mortgage rates.
Fixed-term mortgage rates are “very attractive, almost like free money,” Mr Butt said. “I think now a lot of people maybe want to get out of the rental market and they can actually see themselves buying a property.”
Who Buys in Barcelona?
Mathiassen said the pandemic has spurred more buyers from Scandinavia to take advantage of increased home equity to finance their vacation home purchases. These are cash buyers.
He also noted the “slow, slow, slow movement” of Americans, many of whom want to take advantage of Spain’s Golden Visa program, which offers temporary residence permits to foreigners investing 500,000 euros ($565,000) in real estate.
Ms. Larsson said most of her buyers come from France, Italy and other European countries, but also from Russia and China. He estimates that while the “rate is much, much higher” in tourist-friendly areas, foreigners make up less than 15 percent of buyers in Barcelona.
These include Ciutat Vella, who says “it’s absolutely gorgeous when you look at it and you literally feel like you’re living in a movie”, and Eixample, known for its metropolitan lifestyle. Also popular is the Poblenou neighborhood, on the Mediterranean coast, with its townhouses and converted industrial buildings.
Mr. Butt’s agent usually sells to buyers from Northern Europe, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It has also begun to see a return of British buyers who did not need a visa to reside in Spain prior to the Brexit referendum. “This is a whole new pool of buyers who didn’t need a golden visa four or five years ago, but now there is,” he said.
Purchasing Basics
Foreigners are not restricted from purchasing real estate in Spain. Buyers pay an additional 10 percent estate transfer tax and roughly 2 percent more for notary and legal costs. Mr Butt said new construction properties are subject to an additional 1.5 percent stamp duty. He advises international buyers to hire an English-speaking attorney who will do due diligence and draft contracts.
Ms Larsson said banks are asking for a larger down payment for second homes, regardless of whether the buyer is Spanish or international.
“You are treated like a full Spanish citizen,” he said. “The only difference is that it’s often a second home where foreigners buy it.”
websites
Languages and Currency
Spanish, Catalan; euro (1 euro = 1.13)
taxes and fees
Mr Cossio said the quarterly condominium fee for this property is 217 euros ($245) and the annual property tax is 575 euros ($650).
Communication
Carlos Cossio, Engel & Volkers, 011-34-670 261044; obstaclevoelkers.com
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