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…

Spanish property and the Ides of March

Crikey, it’s got to be serious for the jet-setting McBroon when George Sorus, the financial guru who made a billion dollars from betting against the pound in 1992’s Black Monday, says Britain may have to go cap in hand for an IMF bail-out.

Mr Soros said that Gordon Brown might have to go begging for billions of pounds in international aid after an auction of UK government bonds issue failed for the first time in 14 years, ringing alarm bells about Britain’s ability to fund its growing debts. The Governor of the Bank of England had issued a similar warning earlier.

This follows doubts about the recovery of the UK property market and planned demonstrations during the G20 Summit in London. Beware the Ides of March, the future is looking bleak as a result of the economy mismanagement.

Over 50s and pensioners are the most at risk from a prolonged recession and many are considering their futures in foreign climes such as Spain. Inquiries in February reached 300,000 for Spanish property alone – 20 percent higher month on month than last year. The living in Spain package is now sun, sand, sangria and fiscal security.

There has never been a better time to buy a property in Spain, with a rising number of distressed sales and Spanish bank repossessions. Spain is selling 100s of properties a day to Russians and north Europeans who have seen the writing on the wall so far as their national economies are concerned. Many Brits have been holding back, hoping for further price drops.

They won’t get better than the half price bargains available right now, some with generous mortgages.

Spain moves could aid crashed Brits

Brits are biting the bullet every day as the media reveal more bungling of the ruling McBroons and their cosy cohorts in the banking business.

Having forced Lloyds Bank into a shotgun marriage with busted HBOS, McBroon preened how single-handedly he’d saved British banking and trotted off to meet the more sensible leaders of other countries to “lead the world out of recession”.

He never paused to get the Bank of England, his beloved and disgraced Financial Services Authority (FSA) nor his army of foolish fiscal mandarins to check the balance sheet of beggarly HBOS. Nor did Lloyds do much checking, in their haste to grab the McBroon billions in bribes if they saved his skin.

Ten billion quid is a lot of money and that’s what Lloyds will have to write off having found toxic assets in HBOS. It was comeuppance week for the British bankers when they trotted along to Westminster to say sorry for fouling up the world economy and wrecking the lives of millions.

They said it wasn’t their fault though…implying that that the FSA, operating the light touch” governance of McBroon for a decade or so, had not rapped their knuckles or threatened to downgrade the chateau wine at their next cosy luncheon..

So where to now for cash-strapped Brits, whose property assets and pensions are worth a third less than they thought and the markets that govern the prices are in total disarray and unlikely to show any growth for years to come, according to some pundits.

Think Spain, where the banks were banned from getting involved with American trailer trash mortgages, are still reporting good profits and have plenty of cash waiting for mortgage applicants. They also have the best interest rates for savers with one deal from La Caixa at 6% on 12 month call, being over-subscribed by a long way.

The Spanish banks also have a growing supply of repossession homes at up to 50% below current valuation and they can be purchased from specialist broker http://www.propertyinspain.net/ often with low cost subrogated mortgages built-in.

It’s an obvious way out of the crazy world of the McBroons, who seem to turn everything they touch into a solidifying rock bottom of common sense and diligence.

It seems few of the McBroons have actually run anything remotely commercial in their lives. If UK PLC was a commercial undertaking it would be going bust about this time and the McBroons would be collecting their redundancy payments and handing back the keys to the limo.

Haunted words on Busted Britain

If ever ill chosen words come back to haunt you, consider Gordon Brown’s thresh against political rivals when he promised the Labour Party annual conference at Brighton in September 2000 there would be “No return to Tory boom and bust”

For the record, this is what he boasted: “We can today steer a course of stability at a time of uncertainty in the world economy without putting growth at risk.

“So we will not return to the old short-termism. There will be no sudden lurches in tax or spending policy.

“And there will be no irresponsible pre-election sprees or pay demands that put youth jobs or any jobs at risk. No change in our policy on Europe, support in principle for the single currency, in practise the five tests that have to be met. And no relaxing our fiscal rules.

“We will not put hard won economic stability at risk. No return to short-termism. No return to Tory boom and bust”, he added.

He’s has clearly broken every promise in the last few months and it’s showing in the opinion polls, despite government promises to spend our way out of the recession.

So, what’s happening now with Great Britain Limited, as the McBroon Government borrowing tops the £50 billion of the last Tory Government and they lurch around like “headless chickens” in an attempt to save the economy and their jobs. Gordon Brown has broken every fiscal rule in his own book and oversees a country busted in spirit and busted in kind.

The debts he’s run up could take several generations of punitive taxes to pay off as a forecast 3.1 million people lose their jobs and, for many breadwinners, the homes they have struggled to maintain.

For many Brits this is decision time: Do we stay or do we go? Grab the redundancy money while it’s on the table or take early retirement if that’s on offer or plan to do better in your own business by moving it to Spain?

Benidorm or Puerto Banus, for many businesses, could be in the Home Counties so far as the internet is concerned and reaching London doesn’t take much longer.

The Med lifestyle is a great improvement on over-crowded, over-governed Britain. If braving it out in Britain is not an option, think about Spain, where it costs 30% less for a better lifestyle, what’s left of your pension can be collected from a local bank or post office, and The Sun and Sky Sports are freely available within a totally relaxed way of living – and you might even live longer.

Cost of property purchase and running it are halved in Spain and there’s always a swimming pool or beach just a stroll away as well as a whole new country and culture to explore...

Battered Brits move to Spain

The daily battering of Britain continues with 1,000s of job losses and every economic barometer shooting downwards on an almost daily basis. Lowest house sales, fewest mortgages handed out, house prices down 8%, record job losses and lowest production etc.

Not surprisingly, our wine drinking is up, taking the UK to the dubious title of leading wine importer in the world.

Waitrose customers now provide another useful state of the nation indicator. The South Woodford emporium of the upmarket supermarket chain offers three charity bins for customers to pass on their sales tokens gained at the check-outs. A charity specialising in anxiety and phobias is getting twice the amount of the rivals’ bins…

Clearly a connection between increased wine quoffing, the thousands of finance sector staff being fired and a mass anxiety over the future of Great Britain Limited. Bankers may well have superceded journalists as the traditional big drinkers of wine and it is workers in the finance sector who are in High Anxiety. They are important customers for Waitrose and contributing to the anxiety charity…

Over in Spain, the sun is shining, there is less anxiety and the number of people seeking a new life in the country has surged by 12% as Brits firmly established themselves as the country's fourth-largest immigrant community. Figures just released by the Spanish government revealed that the number of British expatriates registered as resident in Spain had risen to 352,000 at the start of 2008.

That gave Spain a bigger British population than all but eight local authorities in England, according to the most recent census figures. Strangely, the UK Government, seen as inept with statistics generally, reckons there are around one million Brits in Spain.

Although the new figures were gathered before the tumbling value of the pound began creating problems for those living off British pensions in Spain, few pundits expect numbers to start falling. Emigrants to Spain are no longer mainly pensioners. The figures show only one third of Britons living in Spain are aged over 55.

So with thousands of repossessed bargains from the Spanish banks and Must Sell developers, we can expect the figures to continue rise. Paying around half of the current valuation more than compensates for the decline in sterling against the euro - and how good is it, to have an property asset in the world’s strongest currency?

www.PropertyInSpain.Net are the Google top ranked source for Spanish bank repossessions, offering bargains across Spain direct from the banks.

A wobble for Spanish property

It’s a New Year and a new marketplace for the Spanish property sector, as the bargain hunters for Costa villas and apartments gather like UK High Street shoppers prowling for closure sales and colossal discounts…

With developers and builders going down all over Spain and estate agents shutting up shop on a daily basis, 2008 was clearly the worst year ever for the property business in Spain.

The economic crisis buffeting in Spain sent the number of bankruptcies soaring by 182% to 2,864 in 2008, 38% of them in the real estate sector, reveals a new report from Pricewaterhouse Coopers. “Between October and December there were more insolvency proceedings than in all of 2007,” says the report, which warns that the commercial courts could collapse under the workload if this trend continues in 2009.

Bankruptcies amongst developers and brokers rose from 74 in 2007 to 387 in 2008, and in the construction sector from 182 to 692. The rapidly rising number of property companies being forced into administration, like Martinsa-Fadesa, is likely to have a significant impact on the market.

There is even more bad news - the number of Spanish properties bought and sold in October (39,201) was 27.5% less than the same time last year, according to the latest figures from the Spain’s National Institute of Statistics (INE). In the first 10 months of the year, sales are down by 28.4% compared to last year.

That means that the Spanish property market has shrunk by almost 30% in a year. Instead of producing 600,000 homes a year, it’s now doing 400,000 – still more than the UK, Germany and France combined.

So, maybe, more of a wobble than a disaster? A viewed now shared by many buyers in Northern European countries where growing recession, ineffectual Government action and uncertain futures are combining to focus on grabbing some of the property bargains available in Spain.

While new build prices are falling 6.6%, the biggest ever recorded, according to Sociedad de Tasación, one of Spain’s leading appraisal companies, there are plenty of homes – key ready with 10 year guarantees and resales with appliances and furniture – that can be snapped up at prices 30-50% below their current valuations.

It seems that enough is enough for many families and retirees in the UK and other colder climes and they are now clamouring for the big discounts in the warm, welcoming Costas.They Google search for “Spanish bank repossessions” and “Half-price property in Spain” or even “Must sell Spanish homes” and they find the top ranked source for exactly this kind of property.

It’s PropertyInSpain.Net, a long established website with a good affiliate network on the ground to help registered buyers find the best deals. They have 1,000s of bargains and an online showcase of properties to tempt the discount hunters. Just as important, the banks are prepared to lend up to 80% of the price, given the unprecedented loan to value ratios.

Massive discounts, generous low cost mortgages, cheap flights to a still low-cost country from a high-cost, chaotic homeland threatened with burgeoning tax bills for decades, is a bit of a no-brainer for the 250 families a week registering for Spanish bargains…