Spanish Dream Property: Our spanish Dream Bargains Abound PART 42

Saturday, 26 March 2016

Our spanish Dream Bargains Abound PART 42

Bargains abound!

As house prices had started to fall in 2008 and the exchange rate plummet there appeared yet another obstacle to buying in Spain. The Spanish banks all but stopped lending money to anyone, mortgages became at best very difficult to find. This further fuelled the price decline. Desperate sellers were willing to take sensible offers for their property, fearful that they wouldn’t get another for a year or more. So if you were a cash buyer looking for a long-term investment it was a good time to buy because there was no shortage of bargains.
By 2010 the pace of the slide had started to slow down and by 2012 in the south Costa Blanca there were already indications that the end of the property slump was just around the corner. Not so in other parts of Spain however were prices in some areas were still declining at an alarming rate and where rows of new, abandoned, never been occupied apartments stood amongst the cracked deserted roads and weed strewn gardens like a post apocalypse scene from a sci-fi film.
When we began Spanish Dream Property in 2010 we knew it was a difficult time to start a property finding business, after all there were still estate agents closing down through lack of business. However we figured it was actually a good time to start as we were there for the buyers, not the sellers. There has never been a shortage of those looking to buy in Spain, and certainly still isn’t.
Perhaps a little absurdly, it is true to say that the property crisis was actually good for the industry in some ways, with those only out for maximum profit shutting down, big viewing trip businesses scaling back dramatically on their operations and construction stopping. It gave time for the industry to breathe and take stock of what had happened for the past decade or two and actually do a bit of long-term planning.
When rebuilding started the quality was better, apartments bigger, communities smaller and landscaping of the communal areas essential for the new buyers coming to Spain