WHILE the United States is still reeling from a housing crisis, the real estate industry in Spain is still continuing to boom. As autumn draws nearer, many and many tourists from all over the world – including those from the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea and China – are going to the country to the Alps to find some skiing and other winter sports leisure. These tourists naturally want some properties to stay while on their one-week vacation. So holiday homes are springing everywhere in the Spanish portion of the Alps. During summer, the tourists eventually leave the Alps behind and go back down to the Mediterranean coast. Construction of summer residences there are likewise in full swing. There are actually three different kinds of properties available for sale in Spain – a fully furnished house, a non-furnished house and a vacant lot. In a fully-furnished house, everything is available from the LCD television screen to microwave ovens and dishwashers and dryers to even utilities like home phone connections, high speed wireless and wired Internet connections and cable TV connections.

Aside from tourism, other causes of a booming real estate industry include the solvency of the banking system and the real estate industry itself. Another reason perhaps could be a relaxed atmosphere of real estate policy as far as individual foreign ownership is concerned. British tourists have found it satisfying to invest in properties here because they pay minimal taxes only. Aside from the income tax, owners are also collected garbage collection tax which goes directly to the local government where the property is situated.

Some of the best properties in Spain are found in Murcia whether they are villas, manors, cottages or urban condominiums. For the uninitiated, Murcia actually has 881 square kilometers of total land area with a population of 420,000. It is bordered by mountain ranges Carrascoy, El Puerto, Villares, Columbares, Altaona and Escalona. But there are three Murcias in Spain actually. The first one is the region, the second one is the province of that region and the third one is the capital city of that province. Murcia, the city, is serviced by the San Javier Airport which caters to regional European flights coming in from Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Brussels, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Helsinki, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oslo and Southampton. There are likewise domestic flights coming in from Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca.

Spanish real estate is booming so fast that it has even entered the overseas market, particularly in Hungary and Poland. A huge realty development company is even planning to expand its services to Slovakia and Romania. The first wave of projects includes an office building in Budapest and a cluster of 35 flats somewhere near the northwestern side of that city. The office building has rentable space of about 14,000 square meters.

The Spanish are so confident that no housing recession will occur anytime soon in the country that even the topmost economic adviser of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said it is unthinkable. On the contrary, prices of residences and other real estate ventures in Spain have tripled since 1997 or a decade ago.