The phones don’t ring off the hook any more at Spanish real estate offices, once the giddy beneficiaries of a sizzling property market. In fact, they hardly ring at all. And the revolving-door flow of customers has vanished.

Sharply higher interest rates, a glut of homes and newly jittery banks have come together to stall the engine that has driven one of Europe’s top-performing economies for more than a decade. And as the market slows, so has Spain’s economic growth.

Promoters who just a few years ago could sell new homes just by showing crude blueprints — they didn’t even bother to build pilot houses or apartments — are now desperate, and sometimes give away a year’s worth of mortgage payments, cars, trips and other freebies to lure buyers.

“The market has become paralyzed. Things are just paralyzed,” said Javier Martinez de los Santos, manager of a realtor’s group called the Business Association of Property Management.

Indeed, that market used to be paradise for builders and home-buyers enticed by interest rates below 3 percent. Real estate agents say people would literally line up to buy. Housing prices rose 17 percent in 2004, for instance, and a still-robust 9.1 percent last year.

Full Text