Costa del Sol Property Blog

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.

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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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Asking prices are still between 10% and 20% too high, reveals a new survey of house-hunters carried out in March by the Foundation of Savings Banks (FUNCAS).

84% of Spaniards think that vendors are still asking too much, and more than half think prices will fall around 10.5% this year.
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The G-14 (group of largest developers in Spain), claim that there will be a shortage of properties in Spain in the next 2 to 3 years in certain areas if the level of granted licences continues to drop. Pedro Perez (General Secretary of the group) claims that due to the lack of building permits having been handed out, prices on newly built properties in urban centres have already been adjusted via supply and demand.

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Although not the typical article on Costa del Sol property, this article was sent to me this morning. As the title implies it is about Timeshare, specifically for Spain, but it should have direct ramifications for many of the Timeshare companies that have mis-sold properties down here.

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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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In the short to medium term it appears that Spain’s property market is not set to rebound as many with a vested interest have been claiming. With high unemployment and lack of credit a general improvement in property transactions is still a way off. Even though the INE property statistics do appear to showing that the market has bottomed.

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Work on the major infrastructure projects under way in the province of Malaga is soon to feel the effects of the government cutbacks. If during the first couple of years of the downturn public works helped keep the province’s economy afloat, the situation looks set to change. On Wednesday the Minister of Development José Blanco announced where he would make his cutbacks, which amount to savings of some 3,200 million euros on a national level

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I have just been reviewing the latest statistics by the Instituto Nacional Estatisticas (INE), and the signs of the market bottoming out continue. Total property transfers throughout Spain (mainland and islands) During the month of March, the number of property transfers was 168,532, that is, 0.5% less than for the same month in 2009, and 1.1% higher than the figure recorded in February 2010.

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A surge of foreign lifestyle buyers and investors has split the Spanish property market.

Sales are up 200% in some regions compared with 2009 – despite the Bank of Spain claiming that last year was the worst in a decade for foreign property investment in Spain.

“Parts of Spain are doing really well at the moment but there are two completely different markets,” said James Dearsley, European sales manager at agent Atlas International. The company has reported a significant increase in sales since November 2009.
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Earlier today I posted an article by the Times Online, which although positive, does consist of a bunch of press releases from a variety of sources. This is not to disparage the sources, but just that they need to understood in the right context.

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They became a symbol of the global housing market crash, unsold, half-built, lining the Mediterranean like skeletal relics of a bygone, more prosperous age.

But villas and apartments on the Spanish Costas are suddenly hot property again as Britain’s second-home buyers rediscover the attractions of life in southern Spain.
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The following information is supplied by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) for the fourth quarter of 2009.
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After finding the article the Spanish property bust, I thought it would be of interest to look at how the province of Malaga has done by comparison. Although there are no specific figures for the Costa del Sol, we can work on the assumption that has most of the population and infrastructure are along the Malaga coast, Malaga province equates with Costa del Sol in reference to property transactions.
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