Spain is a world leader in the development of solar energy, and since the Costa del Sol is blessed with an annual average of more than 300 sunshine days, it is perhaps no coincidence that one of the country’s major players is based in Málaga.

Málaga's Isofotón HQ at the Parque Tecnológico de Andalucía

But then in December of last year, the Spanish government pulled the plug on the previously very generous subsidies set aside for the solar industry…

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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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Based on an analysis of our own business trends and my personal instincts – both of which have been tested in the Costa del Sol property market for some 22 years now – I can finally answer the oft-asked question, and state with certainty – probably long before you’ll hear it elsewhere – that we have now finally reached the ‘bottom of the market’ for Costa del Sol real estate.

How can I do this ahead of official government statistics or our economic guru journalists? Well, here are the facts of the matter…

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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

For the first time ever, Boston’s prestigious MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and publishers of the benchmark Technology Review magazine founded in 1989 – sets foot in Europe. To be exact, in Málaga, the capital of the Costa del Sol, where the EmTech Congress – bringing together 500 of the sharpest international minds in the field of emerging technologies – takes place on 26 & 27 October at the city’s landmark Palacio de Congresos.

Only the 3^rd foreign city, after Canton and Bangalore, to host the 2-day event, an illustrious think tank comprising business leaders, top investors, entrepreneurs, researchers, technologists and scholars will be sharing and discussing their knowledge of intelligent cities, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, the media, internet, video games and more besides…

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Here is an interesting link, a detailed uSwitch survey has analysed 10 major European nations with a quality of life index based on a whole series of factors from incomes, retirement, healthcare, education, food, energy prices et al.

Shocking, but perhaps not surprising to many, the UK comes bottom of the pile, even below neighbours Ireland who have been suffering badly these past few years. The UK is in the last place, yes 10^th; however Spain is narrowly 2^nd to first place France. Although of all the countries where people would choose to live, then Spain features far and away as the highest and most favourable place to be, with double the preferences of France… Continue Reading

We’re delighted to welcome Moneycorp to VIVA Recommends – our dynamic new initiative specially designed to showcase and promote the Costa del Sol’s foremost service providers and suppliers that we’re confident you can trust.

Highlights of the Moneycorp microsite include an online Currency Converter; their unique Daily Market Video, keeping you right up to date on the foreign exchange market and a roundup of breaking economic news; and…

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It’s only a matter of days since Marbella Mayor Angeles Muñoz, together with Tourism Councillor José Luis Hernández, visited the Persian Gulf on an institutional tour, the aim of which was to promote overseas investment initiatives in Marbella. And already it seems that the visit is paying off…

According to Málaga daily newspaper Diario Sur, British investors representing Regent’s Business School London (part of Regent’s College London) were in Marbella on 11 October to discuss with the town hall their plans to establish an affiliate centre of academic excellence – complete with its own campus – in Nueva Andalucía.

A joint venture with Nest Investments and Qatar’s World Trade Center, the new business school will be built on a 500,000m2 plot, and will have an initial intake of 100 students, although that number will eventually increase to 500.

Following the Mayor’s trip to Dubai, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Qatar earlier this month, other projects currently on the table are said to include a technological centre, a hotel designed to cater specifically for conference delegates, and a state-of-the-art private clinic – specialising in either ophthalmology or possibly cancer treatments – to be located close to the Hospital Costa del Sol.

Terminal 3, Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport

Figures released just two days ago – on 11 October 2011 – by Spanish airports authority AENA – show that for the first time since the current economic crisis took its strangle-hold on tourism, passenger and flight numbers at Málaga-Costa del Sol airport have once more returned to the levels not previously registered since 2008.

In other words, significantly breaking through the 10 million passengers in 9 months barrier. Still way below the state-of-the-art airport’s capacity, but enormously encouraging nonetheless.

The actual figures recorded? Well, to be exact, 10.2 million passengers have passed through the airport doors between January and September 2011. That equates to a very healthy passenger increase of 8.6%, plus an additional 3.6% of flights compared with the same period in 2010. And 38.07% of those passengers have been flying to, or from the UK, followed by passengers travelling on domestic flights and, in third position, to or from airports in Germany.

Málaga-Costa del Sol airport’s busiest days? The first three Sundays in September, with 406 flights landing on the 4^th; 56,200 passengers on the 11^th; and 6,115 passengers and 41 take-offs and landings between 9 and 10am alone on the 18^th.

And all that’s before the second runway comes online in January 2012!

Record numbers of visitors to Spain… I have to admit I get carried away from time to time, I was just going to comment in this post on the detail of tourist stats below. But then I thought back about what such reports have always meant and then delivered for the future, when I have read the ones produced during the past 20 years. Well forgive me, I have seen it before, and then I get excited.

According to a Frontursurvey for the Institute of Tourism Studies…

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