Hi Everybody...........Good Artical In the Sunday
Times.......!
The home of sherry, Jerez has largely escaped the notice of foreign buyers — until now. But with its palatial piles, attractive prices and easy access to golf and seaside resorts, all that’s about to change, reports Karen Robinson The city of Jerez is starting to attract British property-hunters in search of an authentic Spanish environment that’s easy to get to, and where a round of golf is not out of the question. Reasonable prices in the southern Andalusian city 25 miles from Cadiz are a draw, but even more important is the potential for futher capital growth, in contrast to costas blighted by a glut of identical urbaniza-ciones built for the overseas market in the boom years.
Tony Haslam, a finance broker from Ormskirk in Lancashire, says: “I have never been tempted by the costas. There’s such a density of property there.
I think the market there was at its height two years ago, and people looking to sell now will be lucky to get what they paid.”
So Haslam has turned his attention inland, and having already bought on a golf development near Granada, he’s just expanded his portfolio to Jerez.
“It’s unspoilt, it hasn’t seen tourism like the coast. And, as in Granada, I don’t feel I’d be reliant on overseas buyers if I come to sell. There’s a big take-up by Spanish nationals. Jerez is that little bit special — and not particularly expensive.”
Barbara Wood, who covers Andalusia for a property search agency, agrees. “If anyone had suggested to me five or even three years ago that Jerez was about to become a hive of activity, a sort of mini-hub in western Andalucia, I would have laughed. It was so difficult to get to, it was not on the radar. All that has changed and it is all down to infra-structure improvements.” The motorway linking Jerez to Alge-ciras is finished and other road improvements mean the Atlantic beaches and seaside resorts at El Puerto de Santa Maria (embarkation point for Columbus’s voyages to America) and Sanlucar de Barrameda are just 15 minutes away.
“Jerez has a great little airport, 10 minutes from the city,” Wood adds. “Ryanair comes in from Stansted and Monarch starts Manchester-Jerez flights on March 23. There’s a shuttle four times a day to Madrid.” Haslam has been an early buyer in a scheme by developer Peninsula that borders three holes of the Montecastillo golf course. He has put down 25% of the €670,000 (£450,000) price for one of 40 semidetached villas with a raft of top-of-the-range features — underfloor heating, laundry rooms, “cathedral” ceilings, swimming pools — in their 2,500sq ft or so of living space and 860sq ft of terrace.
The course, which opened 13 years ago, was designed by Jack Nicklaus and hosted the Volvo Masters for several years. As well as its stately
castellated clubhouse, it is served by a five-star hotel and spa — all about to undergo a £27m renovation by its new owners.
The exploitation of the real-estate possibilities around the course has only just got going. The villas will not be ready for two years, while opposite the hotel a development of 331 apartments is also still at the foundation stage.
Prices at Altos de Montecastillo — which backs onto another popular sporting venue, the Jerez motor racing circuit — range from £145,000 to £212,000 for a 765sq ft penthouse with the same area again of roof terrace. Local and overseas buyers are already putting down their deposits. “We think the British market wants to see real Spain,” says Gaspar Lino, boss of Peninsula, which is marketing the apartments.
Mind you, once they descend into Jerez from Montecastillo, with its
multi-lingual brochures and welcoming marketing suites, they might find it’s all a bit too real and way too Spanish. At first sight, the city, which has a population of just under 200,000, appears to be the answer to a genteel alcoholic’s dream, the street decoration consisting of ancient sherry casks proclaiming the bodegas — Gonzalez Byass, Tio Pepe, Garvey — that made the tipple the byword for civilised inebriation throughout the world. The old town’s narrow streets conceal magnificent palaces ripe for renovation — but they could prove a challenge for even the most ardent property hunter. For a start, explains Luciano Gil Del-gado, a local lawyer, their famously aristocratic owners from the sherry-making elite don’t want
to lose face by admitting they are flogging the family piles. “They are very discreet about selling,” he says, and are reluctant to use estate agents. “It’s not considered good form to be seen to be selling your property,” adds Ana Davidson, a property finder, who nevertheless thinks the market has such potential that she is prepared to “put the boot in the door and open it”.
Using her local contacts, she has found two apartments, each of about
1,080sq ft, in a typical old patio house (constructed around a courtyard),at £140,000 for both. On a quiet square near the old city walls is a 19th-century print works with living space above it, which would need a total refurb to make a fabulous loft-style home with a roof terrace. It’s on the market for about £300,000.
She introduces me to David Fraser-Luckie de la Parra. Though a grandee of an old Jerez family that numbers a president of Venezuela among its forebears, he is nevertheless breaking with local convention by going public about flogging his 18th-century palace, which takes up the whole side of a square and looks out onto a 13th-century church. With 18,200sq ft of living space, it is a riot of crumbling grandeur.
He says, having perhaps not quite fully got the hang of the property hard sell, that he would convert it into flats if he thought he could make any money out of it, but the figures don’t add up. Still, as a flagship boutique hotel, it could catch someone’s eye at £3m. If that doesn’t suit, he’s developing an old house nearby set in 170 acres of vineyards into 14 serviced apartments. For £337,000, buyers will be offered one of 14 shares in the development, equating to one of the very large apartments — 1,500sq ft is the average size — and joint ownership of the vineyard and the sherry it produces.
“But the area is not always a ‘cheap’ option,” Wood warns. “It is favoured by top-end Spaniards and country properties tend to come with lots of land.” There has been an influx of wealthy Spaniards from other areas buying “hobby” farms of 100-200 acres, paying up to £5,000 an acre, says Ricardo Rebuelta, a local landowner and general secretary of the regulatory body for the city’s brandy industry (just as important as its sherry, he insists).
Which makes the price of one spread — a cortijo, or farmhouse, converted into four separate houses, with outhouses, a pool and a courtyard, plus land — seem astounding. Davidson says its prime location between Jerez and the coast, with views to the Bay of Cadiz, plus the suggestion that it might be rezoned for development, explains the fact that the owners, a sherry dynasty, are asking £11.45m for the house and 140 acres. Like much of Andalusia, Jerez has a rich Moorish heritage, and its full name, Jerez de la Frontera, refers to its erstwhile position on the border between Catholic Spain and Islam. Half an hour’s drive away — 15 minutes once the work is completed later this summer on the A382 — is the next frontier bastion: Arcos de la Frontera, a large village of white-painted houses surmounted by a castle atop a honeycomb-coloured cliff. Arnold Allen, who has retired from the oil and gas industry, and his wife, Christine, have put down a 20% deposit on a three-bed detached villa at the nearby Arcos Gardens, and will pay the rest of the £456,000 price when it is finished later this year. The 440-acre development, with its olive groves and newly opened golf course, will have 470 houses, with prices from £235,000 for a high-spec two-bed townhouse to £890,000 for a five-bedroom villa with pool, and a 23-room hotel and spa. The Allens were attracted by the fact that Arcos Gardens will be a membership golf club, bringing with it a sense of community. They are currently renting nearby, and finding their Spanish neigh-bours’ approach to life a little boisterous — though they enjoy excursions to the bars and restaurants in Arcos town.
“When it’s all completed, it will turn into something special. A little
oasis,” says Christine. Real Spain, then, but not too Spanish