Home

Efficiency in housing production

quarterly figures on the evolution of materials and labour costs by type of work. In this way, companies have a benchmark for measuring their efficiency in this respect.
Analysis of the evolution of building costs in recent years shows that they have adjusted to the performance of the general price index since the second half of the last decade, thus breaking the trend where costs were rising above inflation in the eighties and first part of the nineties (chart 5.3). Amongst construction costs, labour costs have been the ones to increase at the fastest pace from the historical standpoint, although in recent years their performance has been more similar to that of building materials (chart 5.4).
c) Quaitty and customer satisfaction
In respect of the quality of the end products in the real estate market, there are no public indicators that make it possible to measure efficiency in this sense, either for the industry as a whole or for private companies. The situation is similar in terms of customer satisfaction, although here information is available at the company level and so improvements are possible in this field.
d) Corporate resutts
However, there is sufficient information about corporate results to be able to draw up a series of indicators that make it possible to measure the improvement that has taken place in the efficiency of companies and the industry. In this respect the data for the last few years reveal: the booming sales volumes of listed companies, which trebled in the period 2000-2004, the significant increase in the gross margin which represents nearly 28% of total sales, and in net profit, 25% of sales. In the same period, the market value of these companies rose to reach 575% of sales.
Competitive advantages in Spain. Features of the Spanish
model
The increase in real estate investment which has occurred in Spain has led the residential development industry to grow significantly. This growth was based on three factors:
1 Strong housing demand. The improvement in Spanish households' real income, the large increase in the immigrant population and the arrival of an increasing number of holiday-makers who decide to spend a longish time at their own houses has led to a strong increase in residential demand in recent years. Thus, while in 1987-1997 the volume of transactions reached an average of just over 500,000 a year, the figure has doubled between1998 and the present day.
2 The improvement in financial conditions. The Spanish economy's adherence to the discipline of the single European currency led to a structural decrease in interest rates in Spain. This, together with the longer repayment periods and other improvements, made it possible to boost financing for housing in Spain, from the standpoint of both production and acquisition. In

1  2 
3  4 
5  6  7