Hi
I have finally made the decision to move to Spain, I have an apartment there but I want a villa. I have been looking all over doing my research, and although I can see some real price drops I would be really interested to know - what level of offer below the asking price people are really taking? (I know every case is different). You guys who live there will have plenty of anecdotal evidence of what people have taken for their houses, or how long they remain on the market.

Is the market still static?, the euro pound rate is still poor and although the euro price has fallen in real terms for sterling derived customers the price remains high.

In the uk you can research the land registry for actual prices paid, but in good old Espana there seems to be no transparency on this subject.

any advice would be welcome

regards

al

We tried to beat the price down on our property but they would not budge an inch and from what I hear if you are buying from a Spanish person they rarely change the asking price. Saying that if you are looking at a property owned by a Brit who is desperate to return they may well take you up on a sensible offer.

Rosemary

This aspect is odd really since they make all sorts of info freely available on the Cadastral website. I believe that in UK the release of price information has already and will in the future moderate price escalation.

There are a No of English language websites on property in Spain and they all comment that there is no transparancy in prices in Spain and that all of the published indices have flaws probably most in the Goverment ones.

There are a No of organisations who value property on behalf of mortgage companies and one or two publish an index and even these are aknowledged to be wrong probably because of the "black money element".

On the last point if the government were determined to stop the "black" if the recorded Notarised price as held by the Cadastral (Land) Registry was published was published people would see that the last transaction was so below the new asking price they would be reluctant to pay over the odds.

On the last point if the government were determined to stop the "black" if the recorded Notarised price as held by the Cadastral (Land) Registry was published was published people would see that the last transaction was so below the new asking price they would be reluctant to pay over the odds.[/QUOTE]

The above happens in the UK if you view Zoopla for properties it gives the last price the house was sold for. However I am suffering from this trying to sell in the UK. As there is a significant difference between what we paid and what worth now all be it 15 years since purchase. What that system fails to take into account is what state the property was when purchased. Ours was a wreck and a significant amount spent to get it up standard, buyers are not interested in viewing receipts for how much you have spent on a property.
As always they are worth what you are prepared to spend.

The above happens in the UK if you view Zoopla for properties it gives the last price the house was sold for. However I am suffering from this trying to sell in the UK. As there is a significant difference between what we paid and what worth now all be it 15 years since purchase. What that system fails to take into account is what state the property was when purchased. Ours was a wreck and a significant amount spent to get it up standard, buyers are not interested in viewing receipts for how much you have spent on a property.
As always they are worth what you are prepared to spend.[/QUOTE]




If you look on "houseprices.co.uk" you will be able to see all the sales on the property dating back years.

You will be able to see that the same house changed hands on the same day making thousands in profit for the speculator.

Big rises in a short period, and now big falls in prices.

There are many sources of this information including the Land Registry itself. I used Zoopla some years ago when we were selling our house and it was just fantastic. We sold almost instantly and although the price was not what we had hoped we were happy in the circumstances. We are registered and receive a monthly update and it is interesting how the site has developed. They now give a value for all properties listed and I suspect that outside London this is less than people want but I think accurate in most cases.

The old adage is true :- the price is determined by,

A willing seller and

A committed buyer.

I think both of these parties are absent in Spain at the moment committed buyers are thin on the ground and the Spanish as sellers live in a different world when they index their prices upwards and hold a property on the market for many years.

Some owners have "spare" houses, i.e. inherited or left over from when they got married, and they will hang on for a sucker to pay the asking price.

Use http://www.subastamoscasas.com or www.idealista.com or similar for bank repos. I just got one for 100k less than the value, but had to pay the exact repo price. As long as the contract says the owner will pay any debts, called embargo sometimes, then you are fine to buy one of these. Often if you buy the mortgage from the same bank you can get a much better rate and bigger mortgage such as 80%.

Just be careful that they are registered houses to the correct size in m2 to match the catastro, and have "vivienda" on the deeds, with "urbano" land. "Casa de campos" are great deals but could be illegal and you won't get a proper mortgage for them as they are often considered as land. Country land, "rustica," can be claimed by the council for building or roads and you won't be able to do anything about it, so it needs to be urbano. Also make sure the estate agent is licensed. Anyone can be an estate agent and advertise on Kyero or whatever, and they won't tell you everything up front. Also any without electric or water connected, beware, as it may mean it is not possible to connect and you would have to drill a bore hole or live with solar panels, sound idyllic until you find out the costs of filtering and setting up. Remember Spanish country folk are fine with wells and gas bottles, and no phones/internet. You might not be. And don't listen to the agent - they will talk it up. You need to ask locally and call up the utility companies first.

Finally don't try to deal with this without a local Spanish gestoria. They will do everything for you.

Reaction, as usual, in Spain is SLOW and Spanish house-owners have hung on to the hope of the Expat on a cloud with silver lining to arrive at their door with a wad of cash, not understand local land laws and not speak a word of Spanish and expect people to be honest with them. However, money talks and changing ecconomic situations and unemployment etc means these house-owners are having to sell now, so prices are coming down as the penny drops and financial pressure mounts. Best advice is to go through an estate agent of repute (they do exist!!) and to use bilingual lawyer. Best i found is Conor Wilde in Valencia - Irish guy, bilingual, very thorough, knew his stuff and left me right. Would have to fish out his contact details but if you need them will do.

A property or anything for that matter is only worth what someone will pay for it, the spanish if anything tend to put prices up if they don't sell but as they rarely move around as we do they are not thinking as we do about property prices, I think the cost of selling in Spain is one of the reasons they tend to stay put, only my opinion though !

The two absolute musts for a property transaction are: -

A comm itted BUYER &

A willing SELLER.

Without both sides the transaction will fail at some stage. With regard to the Spanish desire to increase prices annually that may be something to do with the Spanish tax office also taking an unworldly view and indexing prices for transfer tax CGT and IHT annually.

Since GOD is not making any more there may be a case for a slow increase in price for the plot element of cost but tat is all.h

Interestingly just before the crash Sep 2007 when we had decided to buy (oh for foresight),we had set our budget for a village house at around 130000 euro and agreed to view a couple of houses one of which we did buy. Anyway having agreed the viewings one we particularly liked the look of. Anyway while waiting for the holiday to view about a week before the estate agent rang and said that house had been increased 15000 euro? did we still want to view it as it exceeded our budget I said no and was some what perplexed. On seeing the estate agent I expressed my confusion having got some one wanting to view seemed an odd move to increase the price, they said it happens were they Spanish sellers no British . Anyway upshot is we bought the other house and by the time we had completed the sale the one that had gone up was dropped back not to 130000 euros but to 115000. So maybe greed worked against them.

We have just returned from Spain having just bought a property. My husband is always one to put in a cheeky offer first, so we started at 25% below the asking price and they came back with 10% after a couple of days we came to an agreement of 15%... signed sealed and we couldn't be happier. What have you got to lose with a cheeky offer? They were Spanish BTW and we are now the best of friends as they will still live in the same vilage.

Congratulations! I don't buy into this myth that the Spanish are unique in never accepting lower offers. In fact the statistics show that prices have gone down in Spain. I read the House Price Crash forum in the UK, and they are always moaning about sellers being unrealistic, and holding onto peak prices. The truth is, as a home owner if you can survive for a year or two you will stick to a high price (as eventually prices will rise again). If you are desperate you will end up selling. As a buyer your best chance is to choose a property where you believe you can snag a bargain, and put in a cheeky offer. It's paid off for Hotchick, so well done

So are the Scandinavians, Germans and French etc willing to accept lower offers on the whole? It's Brit culture to negotiate on house prices but what about the other nationalities?

The main reason we dont move house often is not really because of the cost of selling, it is due to the cost of the "extras" when buying, which is sometimes quoted as being around 10 per cent of the purchase price.

Hence people cannot move without having a good lump sum to be able to buy another property.

Paying the percentage on top for the taxes etc adds no value to the house but really bumps the price up, so what seems like a bargain on the asking price of the property, becomes less of a bargain with the "extras" factored in the equation.