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.

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.