It often seems like the Mandarins in Government Offices inhabit a parallel universe to the real world. There's a recession, people can't get mortgages, people can't sell houses and property prices are dropping year on year and everywhere there are discounts on the asking prices of villas and apartments.
In bureaucrat land it's slightly different as Spain's Economy Ministry has just revalued all the property in Ibiza town and declared that it is now worth €3107 million, exactly double the value it had a couple of months ago!
The figures show that the 42,000 properties in Ibiza now have a 'valor catastral' (official value) of €1200 per square metre, the same as Marbella and slightly less than the centre of Madrid.
Apparently the way in which the official value of a property is measured has changed and this has led to the enormous increase this year. The problem is, that the local council taxes its citizens a percentage of the valor catastral every year, normally around a half to one percent. If the value doubles, so does the tax.
At the moment Ibiza council say the don't have plans to apply such a large increase and so would have to reduce the percentage of the value that they levy for tax. Let's see what does happen next year?
