Spain may benefit from eurozone housing boost

Average house prices in the eurozone rose in the first half of 2010, thereby reversing last year's slump, the European Central Bank (ECB) has said.

In its monthly bulletin for December, the ECB stated that euro area house prices increased in the first and second quarters of 2010 by 0.3 per cent and 1.8 per cent year-on-year respectively, AFP reported.

News of the eurozone market growth comes after recent figures from The Spain Property Registry showed that the volume of Spanish property sold during the third quarter of 2010 increased by 13 per cent year-on-year.

The ECB contrasted the rise in eurozone house prices during the first half of this year with the yearly contraction of around three per cent recorded in 2009.

However, according to AFP, the bulletin also referred to "divergent developments across the euro area countries" with Estonia, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Spain continuing to see falling house prices in the second quarter of the year on a 12-month basis.

Les Calvert, director of Property-Abroad.com, recently suggested that the "abundance of repossessed properties" and the "extremely cheap" prices currently available in Spain were important factors in attracting international investment.

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