Real estate agents decimated by Spanish property slowdown

July 12, 2009

Of the 80,000 real estate agents operating in Spain in the summer of 2006 just 25,000 are still in business, according to an article today in the Spanish daily La Vanguardia. That means that 70% of estate agents have closed in the property crash, destroying 180,000 jobs in the process.

The bloodletting is not over. Industry experts cited in the article forecast that another 5,000, or 20%, will close this year, leaving just 20,000 in business at the end of 2009.

Many of the estate agents that have closed were ‘chiringuitos’, or one-man bands with no qualifications working with nothing more than a car, a website and a mobile phone. “The great majority of Spain’s real estate association members (API) are still open,” claims Joan Ollé, president of Barcelona’s API association.

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