theSpanishBrick.com

Interesting reply to the article about renting bedrooms in Spain. Please make your comments to Andres so he will get a free model contract for tenants and landlords. We will upload to the blog. Thanks

Comment from Andres:

If you are planning to rent your flat in Spain, the most common way is to rent the whole property.

The other rental option is to rent bedrooms. This option is not as common as it is in London but it is becoming popular since the economic climate of recession makes unaffordable to rent a whole property

Some tips and warnings

Statistics released from Spanish Ministry of Housing have always been in the spotlight because they confuse buyers, investors and tend to be useless for marketers.

The best example is the latest data release: in the last 12 months the Spanish market has counted a total 495,684 transactions. It sounds like nearly half a million properties were sold.

Please click here to read the full article

British communities in Spain that have been a victim of property fraud and planning abuse in the last decade are receiving signs of hope in order to regulate the situation of their house.

According to the local newspaper “La Voz de Almeria”, local authorities in the Almerian Almanzora Valley are seriously reconsidering an “amnesty” for most of the 11,000 houses that are categorized as “illegal”. As a first stage, the authorities are auditing all the illegal houses.

The following are basic points to understand what went wrong in Almeria and some general advice if you want to develop a house on a plot. If you want to develop or buy in Spain, we strongly encourage you to get proper legal advice for your specific case.

Please click the link to read the basic point and the full article. Thanks

If you are willing to buy an apartment in Spain, here you have a quick legal guide. Spanish property legal framework gives all the security and guarantees to the buyer, but you should contact a lawyer to help you.

First, you will visit the home you want to buy. You should visit it several times, not only once. And you should visit the apartment at different hours, at different weekdays. Talk with neighbors and with the doorman. Check the lighting, the real square meters, lack of cracks, lack of damp and other defects.

If those inspections are OK, you should at least check the following documents -please click here to see the full article with the ckeck list

The following link takes you to an articles with an excellent map where you can click in any Spanish region and display the average square metre price of new and second hand properties in Spain. I hope it is useful. Regards: Updated property prices in Spain

thespanishbrick.co.uk

Summer is over. Signs of Spanish property market recovery in June/July with a 4% price rise seem to be vanished according to the latest figures released by the INE (National Institute of Statistics).

Yesterday, the news were that Spanish Banks are giving less mortgages: the rate of mortgage concession has dropped by 10,8% in June 2010 compared to June 2009. In May 2010 it had already dropped by nearly 3% compared to May 2009.

From my point of view, the figures by themselves do not mean much: less mortgages is equal to less number of transactions, which is expected in the current economic climate. Also, summer always seems to be quite.

But there is a meaning in this data when you put a few facts together:

1. We know that Banks are giving fewer mortgages according to the INE figures.
2. Banks are financing 100% of the property value. Caja Madrid, CAM and Santander, finance up to 100%. Caixa Cataluña finance up to 90%.
3. Spanish Banks have an important property stock that they need to sell (around 100,000 units from repossessions).

And now, please pay attention to the following figures:

• Caja Madrid sold from January to May 2010 a total 1,237 properties, which means 19% properties more that in 2009 (January to December).
• Caixa Cataluña has sold in a year (May 2009/May 2010) a total of 1,650 flats and rent out 3,750 of its properties portfolio.
• Three big state agents (Metrovacesa, Realia and Quabit) did not sell more than 500 units altogether in 1Q/2010 according to inmobiliarios20

Then, mortgages are less in number, but Banks transactions are getting better if we compare 2010 with 2009 and Banks performance with others agents.

CONCLUSSION: Banks tend to finance the assets that they reposed in order to sell them again. They support their own portfolio. Banks offer a 100% finance to encourage investors to buy a property. Obviously the buyer must be a credible client with a low risk score.

It is probably fair enough what Banks do. The key question is: if they finance their own portfolio giving a preferential rate, to what extend do they alter the market by using this practice.

Read more articles in TheSpanishBrick.co.uk