Spain Real Estate News

Boost for British expatriates who lost land in Spain

British expatriates fighting Spanish authorities over the unfair
expropriation of their land have been given a boost after learning their
case has been taken on by the European Commission.

By Fiona Govan in Madrid

 Thousands of Britons have had homes demolished or devalued by exploitation
of the law .

Thousands of British homeowners have been affected by Valencia's "land grab"
laws, which enable developers to seize private property for the creation of
public works.

Many in the southeastern region found areas of their garden or even the
house itself have been given over to contractors for "urban development".
They were often paid meagre compensation, if any, for the expropriated land
and found themselves lumbered with near worthless properties.

In some cases owners were forced to pay for infrastructure on the land that
had been taken away from them.

Now Spain is being taken to the European court of justice over alleged
infringements of competition regulations, which allowed ruthless developers
to take advantage of the law during the decade long housing boom.

The legal action brought by the European commission could mean Spain will be
made to pay hefty fines and force the Valencian regional government to
revise their planning laws.

Charles Svoboda, vice-president of Abusos Urbanisticos No, a lobby group
representing those affected, said the court case was the culmination of four
years of campaigning. "It is extremely good news," he told The Daily
Telegraph.

"For the first time those responsible for blatantly breaking EU wide
regulations will be brought to account. If successful it will be mean huge
fines for Spain and an end to these laws once and for all."

But he said the victory, though important, would be largely symbolic for
those affected. "The European court of justice has no power to award
compensation," Mr Svoboda said. "That is the next step that we are pursuing
through the European court of Human Rights."

Not one to be deterred by the credit crunch, self-made millionaire, Wayne Connell, is putting up his villa and business in Spain for sale for 25 pounds.

Well not quite.  He's actually raffling off his Spanish lifestyle by selling 200,000 tickets priced at 25 pounds each.

This includes his 8-bedrooom villa with pool, jacuzzi and gym, his 35K Harley Davidson motorbike and his "ranch" business.

Fancy a gamble?

Visit his website for more information.

It was the promise of a dream come true for many Spaniards: an affordable and comfortable home by the Mediterranean with year-round sunshine.

And the Marina d'Or group raked in profits on the back of it, that is until the bubble burst on Spain's property market.

The company built more than 10,000 apartments and five massive hotels, each with a swimming pool, at the eastern town of Oropesa del Mar during Spain's economic boom years, which began in the mid 1990's.

Now a symbol of the country's "golden age" of construction, the Marina d'Or holiday village tempted Spain's newly affluent middle classes.

But many are now unable to sell their properties after rising interest rates and the international lending crunch began to bite into Spain's credit-fueled expansion last year.

The impact of rising eurozone rates has been especially strong in Spain because the vast majority of mortgages have a variable interest rate.

Marina d'Or has been hit hard by the abrupt economic downturn, as have other major property developers such as Martinsa-Fadesa, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month.

Marina d'Or's net profits plummeted by 50 percent in 2007 and sales of apartments plunged 60 percent.

Around 1,000 employees have been laid off, mostly immigrants working in construction.

And its television ads, criticised as irritating, that were broadcast for years have finally ceased.

"It's more difficult to sell apartments now," Marina d'Or president Jesus Ger told AFP in a text interview.

The 62-year-old former mattress salesman who made a fortune on the property boom blamed the slump on "difficulties encountered by families seeking mortgages".

One resident, Enrique, 76, said owners "who bought as an investment are trying desperately to offload them."

"But they are caught in a trap, as the price of their flats has plunged and they can't sell," said the retiree, who spends about half the year at his Marina d'Or apartment.

Over the past year, the average price of a flat at Marina d'Or has dropped from around 300,000 to 200,000 euros (300,000 to 450,000 dollars), the Gaceta business newspaper said recently.

Francisco, 35, who is renting a flat for 900 euros a week, said he was disappointed in the complex: "I was expecting it would be better maintained."

He noted that even here, by the sea, he is confronted with Spain's economic crisis, with "massive 'For Sale' signs in the windows, and restaurants that are half empty," even at the height of the tourist season.

However, another resident, Victoria, a retiree from Madrid was full of praise for the village, where "the service is impeccable and there are no security concerns due to surveillance cameras."

Ger said his group is now investing overseas, in particular in Morocco, Egypt, Bulgaria, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

"We are more careful about future projects," he said.

But he is also currently awaiting the approval of regional authorities to build "the biggest holiday village in Europe", called Marina d'Or Golf, near the present Marina d'Or complex.

The project, which comprises seven luxury hotels and three golf courses, has already come under fire from environmentalists.

Greenpeace predicted it would be another of the "black spots" that are disfiguring Spain's Mediterranean coast and noted that the golf courses will be built in one of the driest regions of the country.

Source AFP

For those wanting to buy a property in Spain there is an excellent e-book that you can buy which really details everything you need to know. 

It is very in-depth and there's nothing like this available anywhere.   This has to be the MOST authoratitive guide to buying property here. 

I recommend it to anyone buying in Spain as a MUST-READ.

There's a lot of information contained within it and buyers could save themselves a lot of time and trouble by reading this.

Check out the Naked Agent Spain buying guide.  It has the Eye on Spain seal of approval!

So…. recently looking up some estates agents who have all been boasting of being 100% legal, 100% reliable, etc. As proof of this they seem to be offering up a fancy looking logo of a business called “Federation of British Estate Agents in Spain”, which states that it is “the only professional body dedicated solely to British Estate Agents in Spain, the professional body intent on raising the standard of service in real estate practice offered to the General Public.” (http://www.fbeas.com/Join_the_federation.asp).

So, I did a quick check. It’s not a “Federation”, it’s an s.l. company in Malaga, called BRIRES S.L., which is a real estate company. Under Spanish law it can’t call itself a Federation unless it’s registered as such, which it doesn’t seem to be as the registration number doesn’t appear on the website (as required by law).

Further investigation in the members section reveals that it’s actual an MLS, where members can share properties throughout the network. Nothing wrong with that, but a proper Federation claiming to be an independent “code of conduct” guidence shouldn’t be selling the properties as well. Nor charging a monthly fee to do so.

These things get on my nerves. Don’t advertise yourself as a self appointed guardian of morality, then try to make a quick buck. It’s why your sector has a bad reputation.

Source: David Jackson

Spanish property developer Habitat, in dire financial straits as the bubble bursts on the country's real estate market, is looking for possible buyers, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

The company, burdened by 1.60 billion euros in debts, has recruited the British bank Rothschild to help it find investors able to buy a majority stake, El Pais said.

Habitat recorded a net loss of 444 million euros en 2007, and came close to a suspension of payments early this year, the paper said, quoting sources close to

the company.

It is just latest victim of an abrupt decline in the country's once-booming real estate market.

The Martinsa-Fadesa group filed for bankruptcy protection last month, while another property group, Colonial, was also in trouble earlier this year after declaring more than 8.9 billion euros (14.2 billion dollars) in debt at the end of 2007.

The low interest rates that followed Spain's accession to the eurozone in 1999 fuelled the boom as Spaniards took out mortgages to buy homes for the first time

or to trade up to a larger house.

But the market began to suffer early last year as rising interest rates and the international lending crunch hit Spain's credit-fuelled expansion, making it hard to sell property.

The impact of rising eurozone rates has been especially strong in Spain because the vast majority of mortgages have a variable interest rate.

Source: Hemscott

I came across a new website today called Leads and Agents.  This company sources people with an interest in buying an overseas property (leads) and agents than then bid to buy these leads. 

The leads seem rather cheap to me, I wonder if it has anything to do with the quality of them?  Do the people know that their details are being auctioned on the site?

I think it's an interesting service as generating leads is very difficult, especially in the current market.

If anyone uses this service I'd be interested to hear how you get on with the leads.

Spain's once-booming economy is in worse shape than expected and could slip to zero growth, the finance minister said in an interview published Sunday.

But the Socialist government — which has been reluctant to acknowledge hard times in one of Europe's main economic success stories — does not expect a recession, Finance Minister Pedro Solbes said in an interview with the newspaper El Pais.

For more than a decade, Spain's robust growth made it the envy of much of Europe. But new figures suggest the economy will expand only 1.6 percent this year and 1.0 percent in 2009, compared with 3.8 percent in 2007, Solbes said.

He said the new figures showed the situation is worse than what he believed was the case two months ago when he denied Spain was in an economic crisis.

The conservative opposition has accused the government of playing down Spain's economic woes, including rising inflation and unemployment, especially in the run-up to the March 9 vote in which Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero won re-election.

The Spanish economy began slowing last year as the construction sector cooled due to rising interest rates that curtailed home sales.

Solbes blamed Spain's troubles on both domestic woes and "imported problems" such as soaring oil prices and weak economies in Europe and the United States, according to the newspaper interview.

"For the past two months there have been radically different figures, such as the rise in oil prices or interest rates, that give us the idea that the economic situation is worse than any of us had thought," he was quoted as saying.

He said Spain would experience flat or slow growth over the next few quarters, but not a recession — provided there are no more "surprises" from oil prices or other variables.

Spanish inflation is now running at more than 5 percent a year, a point higher than the euro zone average, but both rates should fall about a point by year's end, Solbes said.

He said he did not expect the European Central Bank would raise interest rates.

Source: IHT