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WHAT IF THE NEXT REAL ESTATE MISTAKE WERE WAITING FOR 2008 TO HAPPEN AGAIN?

There is one word that keeps appearing every time housing reaches new highs: bubble.

In Spain, this is understandable. The memory of 2008 is still very much present and shapes the way many buyers interpret the current market. When prices rise, the temptation to wait for a new crisis in order to buy more cheaply increases.

But there is a problem: the 2026 real estate market is not the same as the 2008 market.

The great real estate crisis was closely linked to excessive credit, high levels of indebtedness and a construction boom that ultimately proved incompatible with real underlying demand. Today, by contrast, one of the main problems is precisely the opposite: an insufficient supply of housing in certain areas and segments.

And this difference is fundamental.

The problem is not only how much a home costs, but how many homes there are.

Spain does not have a single real estate market. Madrid, Málaga, Valencia, Barcelona, or a small city may have completely different dynamics. In many of the areas experiencing the strongest economic and demographic growth, demand is increasing faster than the capacity to create new housing.

Construction is not immediate. It requires land, planning, permits, financing, labor and several years of development. Therefore, even if supply increases, it can take a long time to absorb an accumulated shortage.

This is one of the key points we should keep in mind: a home can be expensive and, at the same time, there can be a structural shortage that supports its value. These concepts are not incompatible.

The biggest mistake would be to analyze any price increase as an automatic repetition of the previous cycle.

Today, therefore, the relevant question should not be simply “when will the market fall?” but rather: where is there solvent demand and where is there not enough supply to meet it?

Answering that question requires looking far beyond price. Demographics, employment, income, household formation, rents, regulation, land availability and construction capacity are much more useful variables for determining the strength of a market.

Moreover, risk is not distributed evenly. There may be overvalued markets within a national context of scarcity, just as there may be seemingly cheap assets in places where structural demand is weak.

That is why the real estate market of the coming years will, above all, be a market of selection.

It would make no sense to claim that the Spanish market is free of risks. A recession, a deterioration in demand, regulatory changes, interest rates, or localized oversupply could cause significant corrections. But neither does it seem reasonable to assume that every price increase inevitably leads to another 2008.

The difference between a superficial analysis and a professional one lies in identifying which product, which location and which demand actually support each asset.

Ultimately, perhaps the most costly mistake is not buying before a hypothetical downturn. It may be waiting for years for a crisis that does not necessarily have to recur under the same conditions.

Real estate is not about predicting the next collapse. It is about understanding which economic forces will support the value of an asset when the time comes to sell.

And today, across a large part of the Spanish market, that force is not credit.

It is scarcity.