With 'for sale' signs everywhere and Ibiza's real estate agents' shops shut, who in their right mind would buy property on this Balearic island at the moment? Could there be a worse time to try and get a mortgage on an apartment, villa, finca, flat, country house or, indeed, any sort of holiday home?

Since 2007 the media has chronicled the downward spiral of Spain's housing market. This has been punctuated by stories reflecting the shattered dreams of pensioners dispossessed by fraudsters or crooked councils on the Costa Del Sol and Costa Blanca. Newspaper readers like nothing more than tales of others' misfortunes. But Ibiza's house, villa or even apartment owners and buyers can perhaps risk a slight smile in the knowledge that their property market is not quite the same as the rest of Spain. Despite the Balearic island's reliance on tourism, prices generally haven't tumbled.

So what is the difference between Ibiza and, say, the expatriate enclaves around Alicante? Many of the mainland towns close to the luxury villas Ibiza Costas used to be filled filled with Brits enjoying the good life. Pensioners could live far more comfortably than they could in the UK. The sun shone and prices seemed low.

Ibiza has never been a retirement haven. So the collapse of sterling from the point in 2007 when a pound bought one-and-a-half euros to recent ti