Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Hello all,
My partner and I made the move to Spain (valencia) a year ago and we are happy here. We currently own a Buy to Let property in the UK (worth approximately 220k and has a 120k mortgage so approximately 100k equity). With recent rate rises the rent we receive doesnt cover the mortgage anymore and we started struggling with cashflow.
I was wondering if selling up and buying an outright rental property in spain (100k could get us a 2/3 bedroom flat in the suburbs of Valencia) and rent it out at least that will give us a positive cashflow compared to the current situation.
Does this seems a no brainer to you or am I missing something here?

Thanks all.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Bailing out of the UK Buy to Let market is probably a good move anyway IMHO regardless of what you do with the £100k, it looks to becoming a very tenant biased situation with the new government taking shape. We are seriously considering selling ours in the UK, paying the CGT and bailing out and sticking the equity elsewhere for a gentle return.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

I can't comment on the UK situation as I have been in Spain for a long time and am out of touch with the UK - but think I have read landlords are bailing out for various reasons.

You need to consider your capital gains tax situation and currency conversion costs (including rate) and what actual amount of €s you have to reinvest.

Then you need to ensure you buy a good investment here - I would be careful with a 3-bed property do you want families or multi-occupancy letting?
I assume you understand all the on costs etc of a purchase here as well as possible community hassles.

If you can get good reliable tenants who pay then you will have a regular €uro income (not subject to exchange rate fluctuations) and with good tax allowances so yes then it is probably a good idea.

I think you need to do some detailed realistic cash flow forecasts based on sensible sales/purchase/tax/rental income projections.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Thanks, I think you are right. With the arrival of this new government it will be wise to exist the BTL market all together especially if you still owe debt on the properties.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Stick to long term lets. Tourist lets need special licences in many areas. Long term lets have big tax advantages.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Thanks for your reply.
Hmm, I didn't think that the type of the property is important, I was just going with the mindset that 3 bedrooms is better than 2.
I am thinking long term rental rather than holiday let just because the spanish government is cracking down on Airbnbs.
is there a difference in renting to families vs singles
thanks

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Yup, all amateur LL should quit BTL market. It's a running business not a stamp collection hobby.
Even old Gov was going to ban S21, so new gov is just continuing with it. It was actually old gov that did massive damage to BTL for private LL.

If you know how to run business, then you know how to adjust to changes and not just panic from reading tabloids.

If LL is running cash-low from interest rate changes, then it just shows how amateur LL burn money by entering into business they know nothing about.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

The main problem in Spain is that once you have a tenant the onus to pay rent is not easily controlled. If your tenant refuses or can't pay ( due to unemployment/ long term illness) there is little you can do to evict them and the average time to get an eviction order is 2 years. It is consideredly harder than in UK where people get housing benefit.Many Spanish feel a certain resentment now towards foreign landlords and feel little moral guilt about avoiding paying.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

A lot of people invest in BTL because they see it as investment for their pension they are worried to not have enough money when they retire and do their best while they still fit to work.
what is damaging the rental market is the professional BTL investor rather than Amateur because they are motivated by greed.
I will give you an example. When our mortgage gone up we didn't increase rent on our tenants because we think rent is just too high for people now and they will struggle if we increase it anymore. If it was a Professional BTL like what you call them I am sure they will not hesitate to increase the rent until they are back in profit (without thinking if this was ethical or not) that's the difference I am afraid from what you call professional or amateur BTL.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Yes, even more difficult to evict families if they default.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Yes, that is exactly what I was alluding to.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

The only tenants (over many years) that I have had who did not pay the rent were English - but hey any tenant can be a problem if their circumstances change - I have heard there is insurance to cover this problem.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

OT but do you have any experience of BTL market in the UK as a business rather than as an amateur (to use your words) ?

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

You seam to confuse business with charity. You can only run one or the other, but not as both at same time.
BTL investment as pension is outdated old school concept. One has to keep up with changing times.

Professional BTL investor is motivated by profit, thats fundemental for any business. Supply and demand always dictate price, and if one doesnt grasp this basic concept, then there is no hope for them.
Amateur BTL investors are usualy in bad position due to poor planning and not understanding how invesment needs to be run.

You are just going to move bad business model from UK to ES and repeat same mistake.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Everyone starts as amateur but then grows to become professional. Anyone being stack as amateur is doom to fail, sooner or later.

This might help you understand difference. https://fs.blog/amateurs-professionals/

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

You didn’t answer my question ….. I asked if YOU have any experience in the BTL market ?

Not everyone starts as an amateur … I didn’t 😉

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Hi Zak,
Before I start I am a professional landlord with 30 years experience. As a lot of posters have alluded, the game is up for amateur landlords in the uk, a mixture of government legislation and interest rates have made your situation very common. As a consequence landlords have sold up on masse.

I started with the view of keeping my rents below market rent prices, this has proved to be a bad decision as nobody really appreciates it and you end up having to fork out thousands on renovation costs and the prices of renovation have skyrocketed. I now market at FULL market price as this is the sensible answer. ( I digress).

I think in your case selling up and taking your equity is a wise move, and unless you have a good agent you cannot keep an eye on a property when you are in another country.

your problem is tax, you would be liable for U.K. cgt… if you are registered in Spain then you will be liable for Spanish CGT too, and I believe that is quite high, and most Brits sell up before entering the Spanish system, particularly with their principle residence as that is liable in Spain for CGT but not in the U.K.

if you have a wad left I would consider an air b and b or tourist rental, but these are more labour intensive and becoming politically
unpopular.

it may be easier to just put it in Isas as there are a few with good rates at the moment, but I’m not sure how this would operate if you are not resident in the uk.

My gut feeling would be to keep it away from the Spanish tax authorities

all the best with it.

Al

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

:goodpost:

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

As I understand it if your CGT in the UK is (say) 10,000 and in Spain it is (say) 12,000 you will pay the difference ie 2000 (NOT another 12,000) but yes there could be a CGT tax liability here as well as the UK - but unfortunately that is the tax law and is part of the calculations I suggested that you do to understand the total situation.

I would not recommend getting involved with holiday lets in Spain (IMO looking like that ship has sailed) and long-term lets have much better tax allowances and high demand for residential lets exists - depending on type/location of the property (research on idealista/fotocasa)

So looking like you now have a lot of information - be interesting to know what you decide!

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

My parents have a apartment in a community complex that is mainly Spanish and there is going to be an extra 20% charge for community rates for people letting them out,as the people who live there don’t want the hassle that letting to holiday makers brings with it(noise).
Also I read that the rental apartments if in a community would have to be able to access the apartments without using the community areas also the pool!!
looks like there sick of the very people who bring in the money

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

No, they are fed up with owners letting to tourists at very high rents which effectively exclude less wealthy Spanish citizens renting them long term at an affordable rent. Tourists should stay in hotels and let the local families have a home they can afford to rent. If the tourists can’t afford the hotels they should go somewhere else cheaper.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

You would need to check the Community rules for that.
Ours here actually state that you can allow others to use the flats but you cannot rent short term for financial gain.
A lady in the next stairway to us obtained a tourist licence but the community appealed it and it since been withdrawn by the Town Hall.
We are however free to give long term lets as this is in the community rules and indeed there are two in our stairway.

The main thing is that, it doesn't (or shouldn't) require government intervention.

A friend who lives in Valencia City has said that over 60% of the tourist lets are not legal as they go against the community rules but have not been enforced. The building he rents in has almost 90% short tourist lets and he has been to the community and they are now looking into it for him, the owner of his flat is also on his side.
This is a block that used be fully tenanted until the flat were sold off ten years ago to various owners.
Most of these owners are not Spanish (none are British)

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

No im speaking about my complex.And your a fool if you’d rent for €100 if you could get €200.If you’ve got too much money I’ll take some of it for you.
Supply/Demand.There’s ghost towns /half finished houses in the hills that could build affordable housing for locals

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Suggesting that the people employed in the very jobs that deliver services to the tourists they want to rent to should have to move to ghost towns in the hills, a long journey from their places of work on top of what are already long and antisocial hours, because of property owners wanting to make lots of money, is the sort of thing that brings local people who have been priced out of their own towns and cities out onto the streets and protesting about the effects of short term renting on the housing market.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

There seem to be daily stories about the housing crisis in Spain. A lot of anger is now being directed at short term letting. There are a large amount of illegal rents out there and as the fines are minimal landlords just ignore them. I have a feeling that they are going to restrict renting to only permanent residents and that they will need to be long term rents at controlled rents. All the Spanish parties agree something has to be done and soon. Málaga and the Isles are starting to become very anti tourist areas and people are starting to be really angry.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Spanish TV advertise AirBnB constantly. The ads are trying to encourage holiday makers away from hotels. So maybe there needs to be something done at this level too.

Rosemary

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

The Spanish Housing Minister has just urged Malaga City Council to consider going down the road of prohibiting tourist rentals (as Barcelona has done), things have got so bad.

La ministra de Vivienda: "Hemos de prohibir los pisos turísticos si los malagueños no tienen un lugar para vivir" (malagahoy.es)

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

but without the tourists they wouldn’t have a job to go to.fish alley in Fuengirola and surrounding area has 100’s of restaurants and they are mainly feeding the tourists who tent the villas.What’s your answer?
I noticed that you haven’t mentioned that you would rather take €100 a week for a property that needs constant maintenance than take €200 and have the property used less so wear and maintenance is substantially less.If the council put money into the so called ghost town then they wouldn’t be a ghost town anymore and with good transportation links the commute wouldn’t be that bad.My father used to walk a dog past these places so I’m assuming he didn’t walk 20 miles inland and we are 5 mins from the beach.This problem is supply and demand and when we purchased the apartment it was available to anyone with the money.
if the government was so concerned about the problem they could limit the sale to Spanish nationals only,but then again you yourself added to the very problem by moving to Spain and taking their homes

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

The problem does not seem to be with the big expensive villas which the working class locals can’t afford. It’s with the apartments which is what they used to be able to afford before the tourist letting put the prices through the roof.

The inevitable solution is to ban tourist apartment letting or at least limit it. One interesting suggestion is that you cannot have a tourist letting licence unless the “property” has its own private entrance.

Yes the income from tourists will drop but a satisfactory compromise is going to have to be acheived. I would definitely not invest in low end BTL property. A nice 5 bedroom villa could work out but I don’t have €1m to spare - I prefer to live in my €1m villa!

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Agreed. Spain has lived with mass tourism for many decades now and this problem has only become so acute since the end of the pandemic, it seems to me. The number of apartments built for residential use which have now been converted to tourist lets has grown so rapidly that it has led to a complete imbalance in the housing market. The present level of tourism is also causing problems in other areas, airports cannot cope without ridiculously long queues at peak periods, public transport is so full that people are finding it difficult to get around (as we have experienced, we don't even try to go to Nerja in July or August, and now services between here and Málaga are so full that people have been unable to board services and faced a long wait for the next one) plus journeys are taking much longer because of the sheer volume of traffic.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

Im not sure where the €1m villas came into it or was it an excuse to tell us you have one ? 😉.

The problem will take a very long time to resolve, settle and balance. If there was a blanket ban on Airbnb style rentals it would still take a very long time for those properties to find their way into the market for locals to rent. I don’t think the backlash should be underestimated from both local businesses and local owners both of whom will be financially hit. My understanding is that in the city centre type locations the majority of owners are Spanish (I have no insight into stats for other areas) . Tourists will always find an alternative holiday but any enforcement action could ultimately hit their fellow Spanish countryman and woman.

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

No, I said if I had €1m to invest in a villa, I would live in it not let it!

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

I was kidding 😁

Re: Sell in UK and buy in Spain
 

If those apartments were filled with residents year round rather than tourists don’t you think they would also be using roads and local transport, perhaps hospitals, schools, GP surgeries, etc etc ? (Maybe not airports) It’s a wider problem than tourism to some degree. By shutting out tourists it just brings strain on other aspects of your local infrastructure.

In my home town in the UK an RAF station closed and 2000 homes were built which on the face of it was lovely, but with very little increase in local infrastructure. Roads are queued, local hospital completely unchanged and stretched, schools, GP surgeries, dentists etc etc.

By banning tourists it potentially just creates another set of problems IMHO. It’s not as simple as kicking out tourists and everything will be ok.