Taliban can afford to move to Spain…

There can be few people left who do not think unbeloved, unelected leader McBroon has lost the plot in the fiscal arena after his crazy idea to hand over millions to the terrible Taliban to rebuild their lives rather than give a helping hand to thousands of British families and pensioners in near penury as a result of his pension raids and stealth taxes of the last decade.

As McBroon postures on the international stage handing out taxpayers’ money right, left and centre to boost his ego and piggy bank when he is finally given the Order of the Boot by British voters, it’s clear he has lost touch with reality.

To claim Britain is out of recession on the basis of some barely measureable GDP for a single quarter when it takes the results of three successive quarters to prove we are in a recession, is clutching at straws.

McBroon has run up debts equal to 72% of the GDP and it will take a decade of even higher taxes and belt tightening to pay this lot back – even longer if the international lenders decide to charge higher interest rates because of the country’s poor performance.

This is a frightening prospect for pensioners and those thinking about retirement based on fixed incomes. The Taliban can afford new poppy farms, trade in their mopeds for 4x4 all-terrain Land Cruisers fitted with rocket launchers and have R&R breaks in sunny Spain. Brits in need get another slap in the face from McBroon.

Future hardships, even if the Cameroons manage to scrape an election victory, are guaranteed for UK citizens in a country wracked and ruined by the idiotic McBroons.

Is it any wonder that so many over-50 Brits are now researching moving to Spain where their pensions will go further, their lives will be warmer, their full-filled years all the longer and the direct aftermath of the McBroon era can be escaped…

There are loads of property bargains in Spain, but be quick before the Taliban catch onto the idea of a Spanish life-style funded by the British taxpayer…

Brit buyers voting with their feet

It should be a good year for property purchase in Spain and already the Russian, Scandinavian and Benelux buyers are bagging most of the bargains, priced at levels of at least five years ago.

The British, who have been sitting on their hands during the recession, seem more likely to buy in 2010, as they now realise their country is going nowhere soon, thanks to the trillions of pounds of debt incurred by the UK government that needs to be repaid over the next decade. They now accept that voting out the incompetent Labour Government isn’t likely to improve the position of most British families as fiscal hardship, increased taxes and job losses take their toll.

They see Britain’s busted economy, collapsed currency, Governmental mismanagement and lack of inward investment and realise the country is at the bottom of the G20 pile and regarded internationally as a basket-case. There has been few products to export as manufacturing has left these shores in waves, to be replaced by now disgraced banking and financial services. Profits from making cars and other consumer goods goes to overseas corporations and the associated danger of losing jobs to cheaper factories in Eastern Europe.

All this means many Brits are more likely to vote with their feet, putting a big X for Spain, their favourite destination for decades and snapping up quality holiday properties at bargain prices as bolt holes away from the ongoing economic rigours of Britain or for full-time living in the sun.

The property market may have collapsed and the Spanish economy may be in tatters but people are still interested in setting up a new life-style for themselves in Spain? They have done their research, logged the market trends and compared the results with the prospects of staying put in the UK.

Conversely, we see many people now leaving Spain and returning to the UK. They are mainly unable to make ends meet as active workers or retirees and want to get back to friends and family in the UK, where they hope their prospects will improve. For many the decline in Sterling will mean a good return on their property investment, or at worse getting all their money back if they bought in the peak years of the Spanish property market.

Specialist brokers like PropertyInSpain.Net is getting one or two of these returnees a day listing their properties on their website which is ranked by Google as the number one source for Spanish bank repossessions and bargain property in Spain, attracting 1,000s of bargains hunters every day]

Most bargains are coming from Spanish banks, who were not allowed by the Bank of Spain regulator to go anywhere near the toxic assets that blighted the US and UK banking industries. However, Spanish banks over-invested in the country’s booming property market that, at its peak, was turning out 600,000 units a years, more homes than being built in the UK, France and Germany combined.

They funded over confident developers and house-builders and together they created a housing bubble that burst within a decade, accelerated by greed, graft and corruption within many town halls. This left many buyers in legal limbo, having been lured into offplan sales of illegally built homes in places like Marbella, Costa Almeria and Costa de la Luz.

Central Government has moved quickly to resolve many of the problems, jail the conmen and to tighten up the planning regime. In Marbella, for instance, there are now volumes of records showing clearly which properties are legal and which are not and developments that are likely to become legal in the near future. Buyers and their Spanish lawyers can consult the lists and buy with new-found confidence.

Likewise the bank-owned bargains are fully legal, are discounted by up to 50% of the last valuation and come with generous mortgages built-in. A worthwhile combination for buyers wanting a great holiday homes or a fulltime move to sunny Spain…an opportune moment to make the move to secure a bargain.

Demolition property pain in Spain

The public relations contrast between Dubai and Spain was emphasised quickly enough in the first week of 2010 when the world’s tallest building went up amid a blaze of world publicity and the new homes of Brit buyers were battered down by bulldozers.

The rulers of Dubai called up 10,000 fireworks, sky divers and a laser light show to shore-up their broken property sector and tell property buyers the market would return and their investment would pay-off.

Town halls in Costa de la Luz and Almeria called up the bulldozers to demolish new homes, legally licensed by a previous corrupt administration. The negative message was summed up in media headlines like “Happy New Year – we’re going to bulldoze your homes” whereas Dubai got positive coverage worldwide.

The house-building industry is vital to the economies of both countries but is decimated by over-supply and recessional woes. Every sale is important to Spain and Dubai and these need confidence in the market. Some buyers will get their fingers burned in both countries as prices have dropped by 30% or more, but for others, that is an opportunity to buy in cheaply, sit back, ride the storm and get a decent return in 3-5 years.

Spanish property experts have warned about the illegal building in Almeria and Costa de Luz for years and early buyers moved in to homes with only builders’ supply of power and water. They often lost even this when the builder went bust or pulled the plug.

The Socialist Spanish Government has done little to help and has largely stood back as new regimes in the town halls have been left to their dirty work. They intervened directly in Marbella where 1,000s of illegal properties (corrupt and jailed town hall officials) have been made legal retrospectively and a massive dossier of these is available to the lawyers of all prospective purchasers.

That is good for the market, provides reassurance to buyers who can now snap up repossession bargains from Spanish banks and hard-pressed developers keen to unload completed stock.

But to ignore the plight of innocent buyers in other areas seems suicidal; to allow new rival on the block Dubai to provide added confidence to buyers while failing to follow suit, results in more pain and new questions on the safety and stability of the Spanish property market.

According to Abusos Urbanísticos Almanzora NO, a local group (see image above) representing homeowners with “precarious legal status” in the area “the authorities still fail to recognize the enormous damage that this scandal has caused to Spain’s reputation both at home and abroad.”

Local municipalities' insistence on tearing down the homes of owners who purchased their property in good faith is “economic suicide,” the organization argues. Negative publicity alone should make the Government and authorities rethink the threats, Spanish honour should result in full, immediate compensation for owners and all illegal development should be listed online.

Spanish property bargains window for 2010

There is still a “window of opportunity” for some bargain property purchases in Spain as that country’s economy, like that of the UK, shows little sign of recovery at the start of the New Year.

Just two months ago the European Commission assessed the fiscal state of play and stated: "Spain's weaknesses over the developing crisis reflect mainly the reversal of the continuous domestic demand expansion of over a decade, which was associated with high indebtedness of the private sector, large external deficits and debt, an oversized housing sector compared with the euro area average and fast rising asset prices, notably of real estate assets."

Some economists are likening the parlous states of Spain and the UK, the only major economies still officially in recession and deciding that “recovery over the next 12 months will be gradual and drawn-out”.

While the UK housing market remains depressed, due to a lack of buyer confidence and shortages of good mortgages, the reverse is true in Spain. There are many bargains as a result of the recession and this means loan to value deals of up to 80 percent. Many properties are now owned by Spanish banks who just want to get back any outstanding mortgages or the loans to developers and house builders.

House sales in Spain are down 25% from their peak in 2007, but that is still a whopping 300,000 a year and with some 75,000 Spanish bank repossessions dripping into the market place there are likely to be real bargains around during 2010.

There are many Spanish buyers snapping up these bargains because research (see chart) shows, despite the recession hardships, they are pretty hopeful at this point that the worst of the economic crisis is now behind them. Confidence may not be not back to its old pre-crisis level, but it is now well up from its July 2008 low point.

The Russians, Scandinavians and Dutch are in there too, often with ready cash, because they still believe Spain offers good medium term investment returns as one of the world’s leading tourist destinations and is a great place to live for those planning retirement or full-time relocation.

Brits share those views of Spain, but seem to be holding back from the bargains on offer because they somehow think prices will drop even more. Some prices probably will go down further, but only on property in inferior locations or condition. The best deals, as ever, are based on the old maxim, “Location, location, location” and these apartments and villas are going first, often with several would be buyers chasing the same bargain.

Late last year some newly confident developers actually increased prices of their key ready homes after securing a succession of sales. Sometime in 2010 this demand will start to move key ready and repossession prices upwards, widening the gaps between good, bad and indifferent properties and the window of opportunity will start to close…