Spanish banks may have to swallow more losses to shake off the legacy of a property crash, real estate experts warn, as they struggle to sell plots of land that have ended up on their books and which are now worth less than many have accounted for.
Lenders were forced by the government to take billions of euros in provisions against losses last year after property values collapsed in 2008, with the steepest writedowns destined to cover land they were saddled with as developers went bust.
The weakest lenders were bailed out with European money and others posted steep losses as the result of the clean-up, which was supposed to draw a line under the property problem, as banks try and cope with a deep recession also dragging on earnings.
But much of the old farm land and fields on city outskirts snapped up by construction firms during a decade-long building boom are failing to find buyers even at big discounts, real estate advisers and bank insiders said.
Banks may even be forced to spend money building saleable properties on land, they said, while plots in remote areas may never recover any value, pushing lenders to write them off or sell them at steeper losses than they had provisioned for.
“There are assets which will practically have to be turned back into the farm land they once were, to grow onions,” said Alvaro Martin-Ropero from real estate valuation firm Tinsa.