Spain’s No. 1 real estate portal idealista.com recently interviewed VIVA managing partner Martina Heynemann, to find out how she sees the current market on the Costa del Sol for holiday and second homes, the ways in which the market has changed, which areas of the Coast are most in demand, how estate agencies have changed the ways they work in recent years, and what types of property potential buyers are looking for nowadays.

The interview itself is in Spanish, but you can also read the English translation below:

Real estate agency yourviva.com has been on the Costa del Sol for 13 years, has lived through two booms and – counting the present one – two crises. VIVA partner Martina Heynemann says she is satisfied with this year’s results and affirms that after a considerable drop in prices, the holiday and second home market on the Costa del Sol is beginning to bounce back.

In which year was yourVIVA founded and with what intention?

VIVA was founded in 1998, but actually 4 key members of the VIVA team have been selling property on the Costa del Sol for over 22 years.

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This was a pretty big headline for the cover of a magazine not known for doing much of any headlines over the past 13 years or so.

Has the mag lost the plot maybe?

Let’s tell them if they have, they may need to know!

It’s a pretty big statement to make, but can it be backed up perhaps? Instead of putting out a 6-page article that might just have been seen as self-promotion, the magazine just let all its content of listings argue the case with new instructions and reductions aplenty. However, I’m interested in blogging this headline to see if it kick starts a debate or not?

VIVA, having reported record numbers of clients in the first quarter of the year, against the past several years, has noticed there’s been a bit of a dip in…

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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.

From:           Martina Heynemann

To:                Team VIVA

Sent:             Friday, 01/07/2011, 15:20

Subject:        Foreign investment in Spanish property up by 28.7%

Hi guys!

Well, here’s some excellent news from Spain’s Diario Expansión website which reports that during the first three months of this year, foreign buyers invested no less than €1,130 million in Spanish property. That’s 28.7% more than in the same period of 2010.

What’s more, according to the latest data released by the Bank of Spain, it’s the first time since 2008 that the total has broken through the €1,000 million barrier, and in fact the Spanish real estate market hasn’t seen such a huge increase for almost a decade.

Of course we all know that the number of overseas property investors started to decline back in 2003, before going into free fall in 2008 and 2009,  so let’s all hope this reversal of trends continues!

But while foreign investment in Spain is showing such a marked increase, Spanish overseas investment is apparently still falling and quarterly figures haven’t risen above €600 million since 2007.

Apologies to those of our Blog readers who don’t speak Spanish, but if you’d like to know more, then please pop in and we’ll be only too happy to give you a full breakdown of the article.

Martina Heynemann

VIVA Managing Partner

Well, I’m hardly going to ignore a headline in the British press like this one really.

It is part of a process that’s building and after many years of highly negative press, it seems inescapable to most now, that well, what goes around comes around and our day is perhaps here once more.

Along with other articles I’m blogging about though, it does sometimes pose the question: Is this a good or a bad thing?

Well it’s not me asking the question. This time it’s Citywire and Linton Chiswick reporting on what they say is rare good news for Spanish property owners.

So I’m not going to stop them. Lots of stats here, and comments about good value, plus firm buy investment, and views on how the market can only fall so far. Continue Reading

Well, jeeze, it’s nice to see the British press reporting some good news, but it isn’t really just for British homeowners, where it applies then it’s very good news for everyone.

The Telegraph reported recently that there was to be an amnesty for ‘illegally’ built homes under a new regional government initiative in Andalucía, in this reported instance relating to 11,000 homes in the Axarquía region. Continue Reading

'Resident' VIVA Blog authors Carolyn Mowlem, Martina Heynemann & Chris McCarthy

Hello, and welcome to our brand new blog. We’re thrilled to bits with its cool and funky design, and over the weeks, as we gradually populate it with all manner of useful, topical, informative and entertaining Costa del Sol stuff, we hope you’re going to become well and truly addicted! Take a look around…

OK, so it’s not the first time that VIVA has ventured into the realms of the Blogosphere, that was back in 2009. To be honest, we never did much like the look and feel of the ‘one size fits all’ blog template that we bought off the peg, and we were pretty much novices when it came to posting, too. But that was then! Continue Reading