Costa del Sol Property Blog

Investors bought off-the-plan apartments in a proposed development called Estepona Beach and Country Club, 30km west of Marbella.

In some cases, the prospective owners – many of whom were from Northern Ireland – put down an £85,000 deposit for their Spanish properties.

However, the land still belonged to its original owner and the complex was never built.

An investigation is now ongoing into Ocean View Properties, based in Birmingham, which was the British representative for Sun Golf Desarrollos Immobiliarios SL in Spain.
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There’s one factor more than any other that UK house price bulls use to back up their views. Supply and demand.

There are plenty of variations on the theme. But the general argument goes like this: “We live on a small island, our population is growing, and there just aren’t enough houses to go around.”

And the rebound seen in the market last year simply seems to confirm this view. There aren’t enough houses – so you can’t go wrong with bricks and mortar.

The bulls have got it right in one sense. House prices are indeed all about supply and demand. But it’s supply and demand for credit, not houses.

If you want the proof, just look at Spain…
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I have just been reading a positive article in the telegraph.co.uk that claims that the amount of enquiries for Spain are up quite drastically from last year. A good sign! I should just point out though that ‘interest’ does not equate to sales and has the figures are given in percentages, they do not give a clear indication of how many individuals are actually looking at buying in Spain. From my point of view the demand for Costa del Sol property from the British market has picked up slightly, but remains weak due to exchange rates and other financial considerations.

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I have just read an article on spanishpropertyinsight talking about how Town halls have come up a with a controversial but apparently legal way to raise money; by forcing banks to develop land acquired in debt-for-property swaps and charging them for the privilege.

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Just found an article by Mark Stucklin reporting that it appears that the Spanish property market might have bottomed out. Although Andalucia still is down, as I reported recently, it is good to see that there has been a pick up in resale properties and the drop in due to lowering new build sales. Anyway, please find the article below.

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The surplus supply of newly built properties on the market waiting for a buyer rose by 8.9% to 114,147 by the end of in 2009 in Andalucía, according to the Ministry of Housing. On a national level, the supply of newly built properties on the market stands at 688,044 properties, an overall increase of 12%.

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After recently posting an article on the level of property transfers in October I thought I would do a bit a research to get a clearer idea of how Andalucía and hopefully the Costa del Sol has faired as general national information is only useful up to an extent.
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The government of Andalucia, or Junta, announced yesterday a subsidy of 1 billion Euros to help liquidate the region’s property glut estimated at around 70,000 newly-built homes.
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The latest quarterly property index has just been released by Spain’s Statistics Institute (INE). I have included all the pertinent information from the document below.
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