In a congress organized by APD Spain’s main construction companies have said that the price of property could rise sharply within two years if more land is not made available for new buildings.

Fernando Martín, the president of Fadesa, complained that the procedures for making land available to build on could take up to six years in Spain when in other countries such as Morocco or Mexico it had been reduced to just one and a half years.

He also claimed that the price of new flats in Spain would not go down and interest rates would not rise any further in contrast with the predictions made by many experts.

Martin pointed out that since the local elections earlier this year no land had been processed for new construction. He said that the way that the law was being applied was prejudicing the construction industry in Spain.

Furthermore, the group of Spain’s main construction companies known as the G14 said that more land needed to be made available for new buildings because they only built the flats that people wanted to buy and insisted that the demand for new flats wouldn’t drop from between 450,000 and 500,000 per year.

Martín warned that employment levels could be affected if the disincentive to build new demand for new properties continued and that according to his figures the promotion of new property could drop by up to 60% as it did over the last six months.