I don't know if there are property people on here or people that have a keen interest in Spanish property but some good honest comments would be appreciated.

The reason I ask is that I work for a property portal mainly focused on the UK market but we also have international properties and Spain has the most listings by far.

I have spoken to Agents but they tend to only give you their spin. The UK has help to buy, is Spain planning anything to introduce to boost the market. Here on the Costa del Sol a lot of the big property company's are no more and the smaller ones seem to have properties constantly advertised at reduced rates.

Is this the case for the whole of Spain, obviously we are aware of the financial crisis Spain is in. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

For the big picture see here

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/11/25/...55_325230.html

On a more day-to-day level it is being reported that sales in Alicante region have been good this year due to new markets and low prices.

Also see here
http://www.diarioinformacion.com/ali...s/1442432.html

Thank you for that. I will have a read. Much appreciated spainrico.

This is the first article I remember seeing to claim that properties on one of the notorious "ghost towns" of Spain are starting to become occupied - although only a quarter of the ones on this development, to date:-

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/...56_505401.html


There was also this article, which I quoted in another thread recently, saying that there had been a big increase in the number of properties sold in Malaga province during September 2013 compared to the same month in 2012 (although still not a large number by any means).


http://www.diariosur.es/20131111/loc...311111355.html

From what I read today in the Daily Mail, perhaps the financial crisis is not the most important factor affecting sales. it's the threat of having your property demolished because even though it may have come with local planning permission, the local authority wasnt authorised to issue building permits for the land anyway. The banks also are including illegally built properties in their special offers.

Your mistake here was reading the Daily Mail

I use Google Alert for 'Spanish property' which brings up some items of interest. Together with monitoring the Spanish press and several useful blogs and websites. Some property portals provide useful information while others attempt to hide their sales techniques behind purple prose ('Britons are flocking back to Spain in search of property' etc). There are two main areas of interest - the property that foreigners are interested in buying (coastal, small villages, or the campo)... and the property that attracts the Spanish (i.e. apartments in major cities etc).
The local English-language press is biased towards their advertisers, the press from London is biased against their readers buying in Spain at all.

I don't think the press from London really cares one way or another whether Brits buy in Spain, France or Timbuktu, what they are doing is quite rightly pointing out the potential pitfalls of buying in Spain. Personally I think that is a good thing, if it saves someone getting ripped off and ending up with an illegal property, what's so bad about that? There are plenty of articles out there suggesting that now might be a good time to buy seriously reduced property in Spain, but caveat emptor!

A property is not necessarily illegal when it is built. The classic case is a farm. The law says that farming cannot be carried on within 1 km of an urban area. So if the Ayuntamiento extends the urban area and allows development, any farm within the limit becomes illegal and must cease operations.

Here in Catalonia development has been allowed within the Collserola National Park. The houses are up and are occupied. The houses are legal because no one has taken a case to court, but the Audiencia Nacional might well declare them illegal if asked.

Legal uncertainty is the biggest impediment to investing in Spain. It affects every business decision, from solar energy to simply buying a property.

Lenox is correct. The media run only three types of stories:
1. Ones that big up their advertisers
2. Ones that get people reading the newspaper or clicking on their site
3. A small amount of factual contect - the "news of the day" if you like that they get from Reuters et al

Any content that they make up for 1. or 2. is just that, "made up" for the purpose of making money. One day they may think that the "Spanish property demolision" hook will make them money, other days it may be "Brits flocking to buy Spanish property". They are not interested in the actual situation

If you buy in Spain at this time, you are buying into a falling market. If you couple that with the well-publicised absolute dishonesty within the entire Spanish property market, it is not a wise move.

I've never come across one single honest person involved in the market and I've bought and sold several properties over many years in Spain (for my own use).

There must be thousands of pages in the public domain documenting the disasters encountered when dealing with the plethora of crooks involved, and our fellow British countrymen are well up there in the league of shame.

Your comments about the press dont make much sense. Obviously the newspaper itself has no interest in any of its content. They publish to make money and that's it. What you cant say in this case is that the report was inaccurate, and that's what's important

The point I was making as that you can't trust the British press in terms of "fluff" pieces. You need to go out and look at primary sources of data

Google is your friend. The Daily Mail is not

In Madrid a few properties are selling, but most hang around on the market for a couple of years. To give an idea, properties in my block were selling for €450k at the peak and one just sold for €190k. But the asking prices are still around the €280k mark in general. A 60% drop from peak is pretty much what other people I know are reporting, however it takes time for a 60% drop in prices to actually filter its way through to the market.

Spain has always had a system that "helps" young people to buy certain properties, called viviendas de protección oficial (vpo). They come in various flavours, but generally first time buyers under 35 have usually had the option of buying one of these at a reduced price, and with more generous mortgage terms. The downside is that they are not meant to sell them for a certain number of years.

My sister in law lives on an upmarket complex in San Pedro on the COS. She says apartments are now selling but to Russians,