Spanish Secretary of State for Housing, Beatriz Corredor

A few months back, I engaged in some private mail with a poster called ‘Roots’ on the Spanish Property Insight forum. Roots has, along with another poster called ‘Keith110’, long been campaigning to bring to account the Spanish government, the Bank of Spain and any number of lawyers, estate agents, developers and well just everyone connected to the issues concerning abusive practice and abject failures, in relation to many Bank Guarantees given to British buyers that have not been honoured.

It is an enormous and disgraceful tragedy that people such as Roots and Keith110 have had to now dedicate so much of their personal time and lives to seek redress and action on the part of the Spanish government and in fact the whole real estate industry, over something that I’m sure started out for them as an exciting adventure into buying a home in Spain…

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Various national Press and TV media have again asked VIVA to comment in the past few days about the Greek crisis and the Euro currency issue affecting our Spanish property market. There was no short reply, and we couldn’t spend hours talking to them all, so this was our considered and rather long written response.

Phew… What an incredible drama and what an unbelievably stressful time we have all been through since the whole Greek crisis began to unveil itself some 19 months ago and almost spin out of complete control in the past 19 days.

Incredible frustration we know…

In the past two months, within VIVA we have seen record numbers of viewings for our properties from clients all over Europe. We know from our business history, from our website traffic and from the overall downturn in Spanish property sales over the past 5 years that there is now a huge reservoir of people, who are our clients, that are now eager and wanting to make their move into the market and buy.

Everyone knows that prices have been brought down to levels that would have been thought impossible to see. Developers, Banks and Private Vendors who feel they now simply have to sell, have reduced their prices to do exactly that: Sell.

As a result of this, in the first part of October, continuing from a really successful summer, VIVA saw its best sales performance in the past 5 years with properties being sold every single day.

Then coming to the boil, the Greek crisis that has been ever present like the elephant in the room for the past year and half, came crunching to our and everyone else’s door, and for a moment, or 19 days, almost slammed it shut. We then sold a property every four days instead of daily… Continue Reading

There’s an interesting piece on the BBC website telling us that there will be a united decision by the Spanish parliament to put a cap on government borrowing, designed to increase the stability of the economy which those in the markets and with something to gain, keep trying to pull down into some Greek-style economic tragedy.

Spanish PM, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

The article also talks about how the cost of borrowing is coming down, and the further action on the part of Germany and France to lead the way out of the additional turmoil, furor and mad crisis management that has half panicked the world since the whole issue of American debt led to more talks about bailouts and downgrading AAA ratings.

I don’t know about anybody else but just trying to keep up with it all leaves me exhausted. But we do sense an end in sight. Call it a feeling, call it increased clients and people from all over Europe buying property here in Spain. Or possibly next month it begins all over again, although I don’t really think so. Germany is booming, and they’re not the only ones in Europe. It isn’t all bad news out there – good times and better figures are all around the corner.

Not that that should be so hard, one would imagine, what with things having been as bad as they have? But remember, there comes a moment when the only way is up! And well, we’ve been feeling good about being up for awhile now.  Glass half full or glass half empty time, I suppose.

From:           Martina Heynemann

To:               Team VIVA

Sent:            Friday, 19/08/2011, 17:30

Subject:       Purchase tax on new-build Spanish property cut by 50%

Hi guys!

I wanted to share this breaking news with you, which so far as I’m aware is unprecedented and an absolutely fantastic opportunity for any of your clients thinking of buying a new-build property here on the Costa del Sol.

In a totally unexpected move the Minister of Development, José Blanco, has today announced that with immediate effect, the IVA tax on all new-build properties in Spain has been reduced from 8% to 4%. This means for example that when a client purchases a property costing €200,000, instead of paying the €16,000 IVA previously in force, the tax bill will now only equate to half that amount – €8,000.

On a sliding scale, a property costing €400,000 will therefore only mean a tax bill of €16,000 instead of €32,000… and so on.  So you don’t need me to tell you that with the money buyers can now save, they could furnish their new home, purchase a car, or maybe even upgrade to a bigger or more lavishly appointed unit.

The government has introduced this temporary initiative – only in force until 31 December 2011 don’t forget – in a bid to kickstart Spain’s stagnant construction industry and reduce dole queues. But for potential buyers, with only four months left in which to cash in, the clock is already ticking…

Martina Heynemann

Managing Partner

Another nice article for those of us involved in Spanish real estate, and well, if they’re going to write it, I’m obviously going to blog about it.

The Daily Telegraph picked up on the stat that 8 out of 10 Britons looking for a holiday home abroad are interested in those countries worst hit by the recession. And in their analysis by a long way Spain is the most popular.

Plenty of other comments and quotes to back up their position, but all of this has its own downside, we ourselves wouldn’t be happy seeing all manner of hype and urgency reports in the British press spreading to our market once more.

We saw too many fly by night, here today gone tomorrow types, looking for a quick market kill in yesteryear, and we don’t want to see them here again. It is a fact that the British media should take its fair share of blame and shame for a considerable amount of ‘fanning the flames’ in building up our market over years, only to then shoot it down.

The article is good news. If it has you excited to come and take a look, then fine, our advice would be, just don’t leave your brain on the plane. It is potentially a great time to buy indeed, but you have to buy right, which should be from somebody with a lot of experience and who has a long history of support and involvement with previous clients.

There… you have to make a pitch now and again, especially if people need to be steered in the right direction, otherwise articles like this one from the Telegraph can actually do more harm than good.

Well there are enough naysayers about the place these days, so in line with one or two other posts, I’m happy to report that from all sides of the British press we seem to be picking up some ‘stand up’ arguments for Spain and its economy.

I love the Guardian for this article

It’s really good to see a bit of balance to the arguments out there.