Benchmark

Madrid's Crane Forest Shows the Good Times Are Back

Sales of newly-built homes in the capital are at their highest in six years

Cranes stand at a construction site in Madrid, Spain, on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2016. Spanish banks and borrowers are assessing the impact of a ruling by Europe’s top court that lenders charged too much for mortgages.Photographer: Angel Navarrete/Bloomberg

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By Thomas Gualtieri

August 16, 2017 at 4:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Spain’s long-suffering property market is staging a comeback; just count the cranes towering over Madrid.

Real estate service firm CBRE Group Inc. is using satellite images provided by Airbus to track building activity. They show 250 cranes currently deployed in the Spanish capital, a 5 percent increase from a year earlier, as builders respond to demand for new houses.