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I must admit that I sat down last week to watch Piers Morgan´s appraisal of Marbella on ITV with an element of fear and trepidation. After all, he hadn´t been too kind in the past during similar exposes of places such as Monaco and Dubai.
Although Morgan managed to dig up some dirt and spent a proportion of the programme focusing on Marbella´s seedier side of life, I personally thought that, for the most part, he portrayed Marbella as a great, fun place to be, and actually managed to inject a dose of much-needed glamour into proceedings. The main message that came across to me was that Marbella attracts hordes of the seriously wealthy – in fact everywhere he went, there seemed to be Ferraris, palaces, 5 star beach clubs, and flowing champagne – not a bad life really! The fact that much of this wealth seemed to have been squandered on homes that were rarely occupied, cars that were driven simply for fun and so much champagne that it ended up being sprayed across the naked torsos of overly-moneyed teenage boys on a beach somewhere, only really added to the jaw-dropping spectacle. Continue reading »
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The number of British tourists taking holidays in Lanzarote jumped by nearly 7% in November 2009, according to the latest figures just released by the Spanish airport operators AENA, as the popular holiday island and investment hot spot starts to feel the benefit from the introduction of a whole raft of new flight services to the island from budget airline Ryanair.
Earlier this year the British market – Lanzarote´s largest and most important source of tourist numbers – had been in freefall. With declines of 20% and more recorded as UK consumers struggled with the double whammy of a sharp depreciation in sterling versus the euro and the confidence sapping effects of the credit crunch. Continue reading »
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If we assume that the legal matters are sorted in the next few months and the Marbella property owners can move on with their lives, this doesn´t compensate them for the months of misery and uncertainty that they have endured, particularly those who are desperate to sell their properties in Marbella as a result of the recent financial hardships.
You see, if there is a hint of a problem as to the legality or status of a property in Marbella, the banks and mortgage lenders will avoid it like the plague – a handy excuse in the current credit crunch. So this means that the only option for sellers of properties caught in this legal minefield is to appeal to cash buyers who are prepared to take a risk……….however calculated that may be.
This severely restricts the pool of available buyers, and drives the asking price lower still.
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Most Spanish property commentators have been reporting the problems that have beset the Town Hall of Marbella in recent times. Corruption scandals, dodgy planning consents, overbuilding………we´ve seen it all.
Since the last ´legal´ Town Hall plan in 1986, developers have run amok in the Marbella property market, with common practices that have included overbuilding on plots of land, and building of apartment blocks on land deemed fit for other purposes such as parkland and green zones. All of this had gone on in recent times during the years of greed and corruption that fuelled the Spanish property boom of the late 90s and early 00s, with several notable Marbella politicians caught up in allegations of bribery and corruption.
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Could the clouds finally be lifting on Lanzarote? After a year of successive double digit decreases in visitor numbers the rate of decline in tourist arrivals halved last month on this popular holiday island. According to the latest figures just released by the Spanish airport operators AENA, with the German market – Lanzarote´s second largest – even recording positive growth for the first time this year.
The latest passenger figures from AENA reveal that the number of foreign tourists arriving on flights to Lanzarote fell last month by ‘just 8.17%’ - a figure almost half that of previous months this year, suggesting that there may at last be signs of optimism for the many overseas owners of apartments and villas in Lanzarote.
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Although many prospective Spanish property buyers are keen to invest in property for sale in Mallorca or the other Balearic islands of Menorca and Ibiza, most buyers still seem to be favouring making a purchase on the Spanish mainland.
With the majority of buyers now purchasing properties in Spain for 2nd homes, holiday residences and jet-set boltholes, the key criteria are now related to year-round ease of access, amenities and weather.
Many find that although a 2 week holiday on the beach in Mallorca is idyllic in the summer, during the winter months when people are often looking to best utilise their place in the sun, island living doesn´t quite stack up.
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Many potential UK-based buyers of Spanish property are holding off in making a purchase, firm in the belief that they are best waiting until sterling has recovered at least some of its lost ground against the euro.
Of course, this makes sense. Why buy something now, when you can get it for 20% less in 6 or 12 months time?
But one interesting statistic may make those UK based buyers sit up and take notice. As one of the leading Spanish property portals, we have noticed increasing volumes of enquiries during the last 6 months – strange when you think of the financial mess everyone is supposed to be in. I guess this means that the purchase of a Spanish property is still on the agenda for plenty of people, particularly as the prices have come down and started to look so attractive. Although around 70% of our enquiries eminate from UK based clients, 70% of the actual sales volume can be attributed to non-UK buyers. And in the vast majority of cases, these buyers are from the eurozone.
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Although there are still plenty of vendors looking to sell their properties in Spain, we have noticed that the level of panic amongst these forced sellers that was previously evident has now subsided.
One of the reasons that some people are feeling a little more relaxed about their situation is that the historically low interest rates in Spain mean that their Spanish mortgage repayments have never been so low. So instead of having to service an unwanted debt with huge monthly payments, the blow has been softened and these payments have actually come down quite dramatically in recent months.
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Here are some facts.
1. We are in the midst of a recession.
2. It is not the best time to be looking to achieve the best price for anything if you are selling.
3. There are some great deals to be had.
Now, let´s translate these facts to the Spanish property market. If you are a prospective buyer and you have found a property in Spain that takes your fancy, then you will clearly want to secure the best deal.
Now let´s pause a second……this is not an entirely different scenario to shopping for other commodities. For instance, if you fancy a new Mercedes, you would probably go and take a look at one or two dealerships and then haggle for the best price. Likewise, if you wanted some work doing at home, you would get a few quotes together and then try to secure the best price for the job. Continue reading »
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Supposedly everyone that is selling their Spanish property is absolutely desperate to do so. They will all take offers……….silly offers of course, and they will open the doors to their properties in Spain day and night just to try and get rid of the things…….well, not exactly – there are still some vendors who actually opt to rent their Spanish property whilst still trying to market it for sale.
This is where things can get messy. Some owners who are trying to sell property in Spain, instead of leaving the property empty so that estate agents can get easy key access whenever they need to show it to a prospective buyer, actually prefer to rent the property to holidaymakers to benefit from the opportunities for the additional revenue.
