Tourists who visit Malaga province mainly to play golf spend €103 per day on average, a Junta de Andalucia study shows.
Since 2005, the golfing sector has seen visitor numbers increasing by more than three per cent each year, and in 2010 alone, 427,000 golfers spend €687m in Andalucia.
Last Friday the Spanish government announced a temporary reductions in the value added tax (IVA), lowering it from eight percent to four percent for any purchase of a new property. The government’s aim is to rekindle Spanish property sales and help reduce Spain’s stock of unsold new homes, which amount to approximately 687.000 properties in Spain, and just over 20.000 in the province of Malaga.
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The sale of Costa del Sol properties saw an increase of 7.8% in May compared to the same month last year according to Spain’s Institute of National Statistics (INE), with monthly sales standing at 1,931 sales (including VPOs).
After the recent article on the decrease of new properties on the market in 2010, I thought it would be worthwhile to review the statistics for the province of Malaga and the Costa del Sol.
To the rest of the world it became known as the subprime mortgage, but in Spain it is remembered as the “welcome mortgage.” It was specially designed for immigrants in 2005, at the height of the property boom, by Spanish mortgage brokers such as CreditServices. With nothing more than a three-month work record in Spain, these companies offered new arrivals to Spain mortgage loans that covered 120 percent of the value of a property. All the costs, fees and commissions would be covered by the loan, and the buyer would become a Spanish homeowner without having put down so much as a cent. The loans were organized through US companies, none of which had any physical presence in Spain, preferring to use fronts such as CreditServices instead.
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The situation is so severe that the government recently appointed a special overseas property advisor to help deal with it and to better understand the problems of those involved.
As a result, contentious issues such as illegal properties which do not have correct permits, cases where off-plan developments have not been built as specified and the length of time and cost involved in resolving property disputes were recently raised by the British ambassador to Spain with the Andalucian regional government and the Minister for Public Works and Housing.
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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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THE issue of illegally built homes is one that affects many thousands of expatriates living in Spain, and in particular areas like the Costa del Sol and Almeria.
The General Plan for Urban Development (PGOU) for Marbella, in Malaga Province, was recently approved and its aims are to restore judicial safety to the town, as well as attempting to solve problems from the past relating to the more than 16,500 illegally built homes.
A couple who face losing their house in Britain to a Spanish bank have warned of the dangers of falling behind in mortgage payments on holiday homes abroad.
In an alarming development for the many thousands of Britons who have bought properties in Spain, a bank in Marbella is using EU law to force Carol and Ian Chatterton out of their £300,000 cottage in Wiltshire.
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The population of Malaga province is continuing to increase; however, this growth is mainly due to the presence of foreigners and it must also be said that the increase during the past year has been minimal and the population has grown by only 13,254 inhabitants. The economic crisis has led to a change in migration and the number of foreign residents in Spain has dropped by approximately 100,000.
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In recent article in the Daily Mail sheds some light on the amount of retired individuals from the UK looking at moving back to the UK in this more difficult climate that we are finding ourselves in. Based on the same population it appears that even with bad exchange rates and a quiet Spanish property market, more Britons are still happy to stay in their adopted country.
Dear fellow petitioners,
You may remember that 17 months ago I submitted a petition to the Governor of the Bank of Spain with regard to the non-compliance of the various Spanish banks who were not honouring the guarantees given by them to protect deposits paid by purchasers of off-plan properties. You very kindly supported this petition and were signatories to it. The petition was briefly brushed aside by the Bank of Spain’s legal representative who in so many words suggested we deal with the matter through the courts. This in spite of the public pronouncements made by the Governor himself when explaining his powers to deal with recalcitrant banks.
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When real estate markets slows as is now the case, the amount of properties on the market increases and the number of buyers decrease. This makes it harder to sell properties, yet properties still sell. So, the question is, why do some properties get offers and others sit on the market? In quite a few cases this has less to do with the property (as many are priced to sell) and more to do with how the property is marketed. So below I am going to cover some of the good and the bad and work on the assumption that your Costa del Sol property is priced correctly.
