3 bed 2 bath Apartment in Orihuela Costa Ref 92426 

€ 174,900

https://spanishdreamproperty.com/estate_property/3-bed-2-bath-apartment-in-orihuela-costa-eh-nb-92426/

Great urbanization of apartments with 2 or 3 bedrooms in a prime location on the Orihuela Costa, just 1 km from Villamartin Golf Course, about 10 minutes’ drive to the beach and the Zenia Boulevard shopping centre, and with bars and restaurants walking distance.
Quality properties, being built around a green area with 2 swimming pools, one of them with spa, jacuzzi and gym, benefit from pre-installed air con and underground parking. There are different options from ground floor apartments with a garden, first and second floor properties with a balcony and fantastic penthouses with a private solarium including a jacuzzi; all them with a modern design boasting a lounge/dining room with sliding doors out to the terrace; open plan and superbly fitted kitchen; 2 or 3 double bedrooms with fitted wardrobes and 2 modern bathrooms. This location is the best, close to Villamartin Golf Course and two more golf courses just around the corner, surrounded by everything you need and good communication to Murcia and Alicante airports. Great opportunity for a low maintenance holiday home.

Renting your house as a holiday let still a viable option? part 1 how and when things changed.

Renting your house as a holiday let still a viable option?

Part 1 – How and when things changed.

Many owners of property in Spain have rented out their properties for years as a way of funding the purchase, ourselves included. But recent changes in the law regarding rentals means some are now questioning if it is still worth it. This blog relates to property in the Valencian Communidad (the provinces of Castellón, Valencia and Alicante), but nearly all of Spain’s regions require holiday lets to be registered now.

The first thought for me when compulsory registration was introduced was that not a lot was going to change. We were already legally compliant in that we declared our rental income in Spain and paid our tax (after a few allowable deductions), plus declared our rental income on our UK tax return, (we are UK residents), and as we had paid tax in Spain we rarely needed to pay tax on the rental income in the UK as well (thanks to the UK/Spain dual taxation arrangements). However, it turns out that a huge number of owners were NOT declaring their income in Spain, and maybe some were not declaring it in their home country either! So for some there was a very rude awakening with a marked reduction in rental income when they had to start paying 19% of their rentals in Spanish tax. And some have been hit with very large fines for backdated undeclared rental income too.

We registered as a holiday-let with the authorities while it was still a voluntary process, knowing it was just a matter of time before compulsory registration would be introduced in the Valencian Communidad, and the law finally changed in 2015. There was a lot of publicity about it in the English print press in Spain, on forums, in solicitors’ newsletters, on the advertising sites and various other sources. And yet still owners didn’t bother. Eventually the authorities had enough and declared that anyone advertising an unregistered let after 1st June 2018 would be heavily fined, and that included the on-line websites which carry thousands of ads, paid for by owners, that are used by those booking self-catering holidays.

At the end of May 2018 chaos ensued. More than one major advertising site took all their Valencian Communidad properties off their site, only reinstating the properties once the checking of the registration number had been completed. For us this was particularly annoying as they had had over 3 years in which to run that check, our number was already clearly entered in the property details. For other owners this was, amazingly, the first they had realised that they needed a registration number!

I won’t go into details of how to obtain a registration number here, that is covered separately, but suffice to say a system that originally was fast and efficient has become overwhelmed during the course of 2018, and I’m reliably informed that the process is now so back-logged with applications that they are taking a minimum of three months. Bearing in mind that officialdom in Spain virtually shuts down for August, I can’t see that back-logged being cleared quickly. And that is just step one! 

So, now there are owners who have decisions to make: do they register and risk drawing attention to their past illegal activity and undeclared income; do they stop renting out and lose the income; do they continue to illegally let the property and hope they don’t get caught (they will!). What a dilemma! They say ‘honesty pays’ – well it hasn’t up to now as we were worse off for being honest and declaring the income in Spain, but right now I am glad we did!

#spain #costablanca #holidayrental #selfcatering #holiday #housebythepool #playaflamenca

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Utilities in Spain

We are often asked about the utilities in Spain.  If you buy in a town you will almost certainly have mains water but if you have a villa on the edge of or outside the main town you may not have mains sewage but have a septic tank instead.  This surprises a lot of people but in parts of Spain this is normal.  If you buy a rural property you may not have mains water but use a private well or have water delivered by tanker to fill your huge storage tank.

 

Generally mains water is of drinkable quality these days, gone are the days when you had to buy it bottled.  To get around shortages of water there are now a number of desalination plants around the coast taking sea water and cleaning it up for local use.  There are also a number of reservoirs now that are also small hydro-electric plants.  Water supply in the Alicante region doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.

 

Gas has until recently been bottled only in most areas but towns are slowly having mains gas installed.  Again this surprises many Brits looking to buy in Spain, and of course using bottles of gas for central heating is pretty expensive.  Using portable gas heaters is common practice and fairly economical too.  Modern air conditioning units have settings for cooling or heating and are sufficient for use in a bedroom, although not necessarily that cheap to run.

 

For many years Iberdrola were the only electricity company but in recent years de-regulation has allowed competition and there are now other options.  Also duel tariffs are available too now, so cheap electricity at night and in the morning with a slightly raised rate for the afternoon and evening means savings can be made.  Solar has come a long way too and with 320 days of sunshine a year in south Costa Blanca developers now include solar in their new build homes.

 

There are a few ‘anomalies’ that I have come across over the years.  For instance, where our house is located the water company are also responsible for collecting the rubbish so instead of the cost of rubbish collection being included in the local council tax it is added to your water bill instead!

 

 

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My family abroad: The Big Move

The big move

As Mum and Dad were moving full-time to Spain they decided to sell up the UK home, releasing funds for their retirement years.   Having put most of their belongings into store they moved into a small furnished flat for their last couple of months in England.  Within a week of Dad’s 60^th birthday cum retirement party they headed for Moraira, but not to their own villa.  Instead they stayed up the road at the neighbour’s new villa, completed but not yet lived in, to oversee their own being built.   There were many funny stories we heard over the coming weeks and months, most long since forgotten, but some still stick in the memory.

I do remember was how Dad arrived at the villa to meet the builder one day to find no workman there, when asked where they all were the builder simply replied that “the oranges are ready”.  It transpired that most of the workforce had family owned citrus groves and the perfect time had arrived for the oranges to be harvested so the workman had gone to the family homes to help with the fruit picking!  The builder assured Dad the workman would be back as soon as the oranges were gathered in, and they were but not for two weeks.  This also happened with other citrus fruits, almonds and olives!   I don’t think that would be tolerated these days, but it was considered perfectly reasonable at the time.

Then the time Mum was puzzled when looking around one of the bathrooms as there was no waste pipe for the toilet.  Mum did not speak Spanish and I’m told there was great hilarity as Mum enacted what she was trying to convey (!) but once the man understood he made a few measurements then hit the floor with a heavy hammer revealing the top of the waste pipe that had been concreted over by accident!

And the time towards the end of the build when Dad pointed out a socket was missing.  The builder opened the connection box on the wall and poured a coloured liquid in and waited without saying a word.  A few minutes later a coloured patch appeared on the wall and he calmly took a hammer and hit the patch opening up the plastered over socket location!

Mum and Dad finally moved into the villa about 6 months later, the underbuild wasn’t finished, the gardens were not planted and there were still many small jobs to be completed but they were more than happy to be finally in their own home in the sun.

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