Have you noticed people have woken up?

Now the christmas holidays out of the way all the people that have lost money in spain have woken up and are trying to recover thier money again.

but this year there is a very interesting development.

more and more people are looking at moving to spain and even buying here.
thats an amazing turnaround from last year.

maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is coming brighter and closer if there is going to be more cash injections into spain.

 

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When(?) I recieve my cash back, even will all the stress, I intend to buy a place for the family to enjoy long term.

Lots of good deals out there, and even more so as people lower prices.

2 bed golf property  for 39k euro in murcia!

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Perhaps I worry too much but I wouldn't want to buy an place on any urbanisastion in Spain, ever.  There are so many recently-built apartments in Spain and there are too many stories to be heard/read about concerning unpaid community charges, no Habitation Licences (therefore no utility connections) and I have an awful feeling that community charges could go sky high as Companies become desperate for cash.  Of course, there are comminities in Spain (usually small) where everyone pays the charge and everything runs according to plan, but I am not willing to take the risk.  For us, it will always be an independent house (ie: without community charges) that is well-established in an area with shops/bars/facilites that have been there for years and will continue to be.  

However, if you're only looking for a place to holiday for a few weeks of the year and you are hoping for some kind of rental income....well, that's a different matter...maybe?  There should be even more bargains to be snapped up this year.  According to the news this morning, Spain is dipping even further into recession.  It's an exciting thought, though, that people are once again looking to Spain for that 'Place in the Sun'.

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 Mungry....

if you say that people are now ready to come back to Spain, those are excellent news!!

María

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 Maddiemack, we are but a few miles from you in the UK. We have a property in Murcia on an urbanization and would not have it any other way. There are 60 appartments sharing a pool, and close to a lovely village. Fees are reasonable at 360 Euros per year covering pool maintenance, electric, insurance. We do have FLO. The council (Cartagena) is rigorous about building standards, and  maintenance. We swore we would never buy in Spain. Last week the neighbour called to tell us the patio table had been blown over. Pros and Cons, and Horses for Courses. Don't reject and Urbanization out of hand.

Juan

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which urbanization in murcia, and where is it

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 I have sent you a PM

Juan

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I'm with you Maddiemack. Juan you have been lucky, but just look at the Communities section of EoS for the horror stories.m i love being the sole owner of a proper village house, no shared facilities, and a direct relationship with the Ayuntamiento for village issues. I can't be doing with all these committees and fees and meetings and politics - all that was one of the reasons for leaving the UK!

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Tamara, so what makes you think that you cannot have a relationship with the Ayuntamiento because you are on an Urbanization? Quite the reverse really. We had a problem with fly tipping and the Urb was able to speak with the council and GC to stop it.

Juan

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Depends on what you want. We live on an urbanisation and love it, thank you. Living in a Spanish village would be, I think, a little like hell on earth. Fine if you want to immerse yourself in a totally different culture and language but its not fine for everyone. The same as buying one of these places behind high walls. How do you get to know people? When we moved in, the neighbours were helpful, providing tea and sandwiches and advice on the area, banking, shops, health centre procedures and so on. We have spanish, british, norwegian, dutch, russians and others around us. It's fascinating to talk and socialise with them. We have an extremely well built complex, beautiful swimming pools and gardens which are kept up to a marvellous standard. A developer who fixes problems quickly. The beauty is we can go out for a meal and it doesn't feel as if your always in a classroom and fighting to find words. I speak Spanish, my wife doesn't although she can understand a lot. We have shops and facilities and restaurants of all types within walking distance. We've never had a problem with arguing neighbours, petty squabbles or demarcation issues. Yes, we have about 5 non fee payers, bought by people to make a big profit which didn't work. Not a geat problem when we have over 140 properties. Propertiescarecstill being sold for the same prices as 5 years ago. That's the difference between quality and the ticky tacky apartments being thrown up which are now going for half the price.
We love it on our community, we've tried the in the sticks and up the mountain, thank you. Not for us, I'm afraid but I wouldn't dream of putting down someone elses choice because it would be a boring old world if we were all the same.
We can stroll across the lake area, walk amongst the orange groves or almond blossoms but relax around the pol, chat to our neighbours or go to one of the shopping malls within a short distance if we want. Alternatively, we can closevthe door and be private if we want to. Nope, our community was our choice after almost 10 years of coming to the area. I believe it was a good choice, thank you.

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Bob

Well done mate you are TRULY living the dream you're the ONLY one on here that talks any BLOODY SENSE lately

Rod

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You're right, bobaol, it depends on what you want.  I, too, wouldn't dream of putting down anyone else's choice.  I know people that live very happily on urbanisations that run very smoothly with no problems and I know people that live in independent houses back from the coastline and near to the coastline.  It's great to know other people's point of view and I was hoping for some when I wrote what I did.  I have nothing but admiration for anyone that actually makes their dream of living in Spain full-time/part time rather than just talking about it and from what I've read from some of your posts, you really have chosen the right place for yourself.  My hubby and I know Ciudad Quesada quite well and we like it alot.  It's our favourtie place in the area.

It would be nice if we could have a few more points of view ie; why do you prefer living on an urbanisation/in an independent house? As it seems to be true that more and more of us are thinking of spending all or part of the year in Spain, it could help us to know why people like/don't like living in the situation they have chosen.

 

Sorry, Rod, I can't see why Bob is the ONLY one on here that talks any BLOODY SENSE lately.......lol...

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i gotta say folk's that if i had known 9 yrs ago what i know now, never would have i'd have bought where a "community" was involved, it has shown me it just does'nt work, you get small group's that keep any info to themselve's, creap around the president like "teacher's pet" ! instead of sharing with the rest of the complex owner's, "secret meeting's" happen behind closed door's, etc etc etc. then the back stabbing start's, being a part of a community  ! is a joke, and anyone that say "it does'nt happen on our complex" wake up ! because it does. 

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Well our house was on a urbanisation and to be honest i loved it, we had neighbours who were Swedish, German, English, Spanish, in the nine years we owned this house we had no problems at all with any of them, very friendly, if anything small problems arose with the English who turned up for holidays renting a house and wanted to use the pool, this was due to because some owners never paid, or kept up payment of the community charge but still had access to the pool, so the community had special locks and keys made that only unlocked the pool gates if the house owner was up to date with all charges, of course these holiday makers thought they had the right to use something that house owners had paid for. They kept asking to be let into the pool area, fine but what they didn't know was that the same keys had to be used to let them out and more often the enough no one was around.

More then a few had not paid the charges for a year or two, but i have to be honest it never affected us and they were being taken to court over this by the community. Something you would get anywhere.

Their is a sense of safety when you have others and houses around you, should you need help in an emergency nearly always their was someone close by, or walking past, when i fitted a burglar alarm to the house and was testing it one chap came along because he heard it go of and was just checking. That is good.

Our community charges were 80€ a quarter, 320€ a year for all ground maintenance, upkeep of the garden around the pool,  including the trimming of trees, same with pool and pathway lighting. Of course it had gone up over the nine years, in fact double.

We now want a detached house with it's own pool and garden but i have to admit to run and maintain a pool alone would be more then 320€ a year, if i could find another fantastic community like our last one i would seriously consider it.

One big downside of that type of housing on a community is that you could get a house with noisy neighbours, and as we know the walls are made of the next best thing to paper.

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 I can't say I have noticed that people have woken up. But the figures seem to pointing in that direction. Emilio Botin, the Chairman of Banco Santander mentioned today that Spain will be entering into a new cycle in the second half of this year. Saying that the market will hot rock bottom towards the end of the year and that Spain will start to recover, although it won't be so evident until 2014. He expects the Banking sector's property clean-up to be completed by the end of this year. Santander has already cleaned up or written off it's €19 billion portfolio of dodgy mortgages and loans and provisoned another €6 billion for mortgages and €12.5 billion for non performing loans and say they are set for what is to come. Given that Spain is only 12% of the Banks income, whatever happens won't affect them too much. He also mentioned that the Banks are not giving loans not because there isn't any cash, there is penty he said, but because the people who still have credit ratings, aren't asking for any. However I'm not too sure how many still ahve credit ratings in Spain and given the requirements get credit hardly anyone qualifies, so I think that's a bit of joke to be honest. Loans last year only grew 2% compared to the previous year but what was interesting was that loans to non-residents grew 8% in 2012 and further growth is expected this year. So it does look like people are coming to Spain to take advantage of the low property prices. Let's hope they keep on coming!

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 Sorry, bluefox, but am I being a bit naive here?  Am I missing something?  Secret meetings about what?  Creeping around, why?  We have a Dutch president who is not here permanent, a committee made up of all the nationalities and I can't see what little cabals they could get into it.  Certainly nothing that would concern me.  The pools gets maintained, the gardens get maintained, the streets get cleaned, the walls get maintained and that really is about it.  

I like sitting in my front garden on an evening and chatting across the walls to my neighbours.  We have a private garden out the back if we want privacy.  We can go and sit near the pools in the garden areas and someone will always come along to pass the time of day.  We did look at a private (behind high walls) house but we would never have the "passing" neighbours and would find it hard to get to know people unless we went up the pub or something.  Here we have people walking past and stopping to pass the time of day which I find great.  Unless, of course, we have been incredibly lucky.  The Russians are friendly, the community fees cost a lot less than we would have to pay for a private pool with the maintenance, running the pumps etc.  I have just the right size garden to maintain without it being a chore, the main areas are done by someone else which is fine by me.

We rented up in the mountains for a while but it was a real pain having to make a special journey in the car just to get milk or bread.  Anyone that came to visit, very few and far between, learned to bring something to keep us stocked up.  We've lived "amongst the locals" in other countries and, quite frankly, found it pretty boring after a while.  But some people might like that, we just enjoyed it for a while but missed the way of life we have now.  

I suppose if we'd settled in a community like bluefox describes then I would change my mind but we have owned two houses, both on communities, and found them ideal.  We like our present one because it's a house whereas the other was a flat.  We may also be lucky in that we have excellent, considerate, neighbours. OK, it gets a bit noisy in the summer months but I love it when the kids are having a great time, when people are out enjoying themselves and we get invited in for a drink or a chat simply when passing the gardens.  

As I said, maybe we are just lucky (twice).  

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 It is very common for communities to have problems. It is simply human nature. When you bring together a hundred different people into a communal living space it can be a recipe for disaster. If you are lucky enough to find a community that has a vast majority of people with the same profile in age, financial stability, ethics and behaviour you are probably onto a winner. If you can find one that's great and  it appears some have managed it. You have been very lucky. However once you find one, your only worry will then be that the neighbours don't sell there property off in the future to others who don't match the majority profile. I lived in a community for 8 years, the first 5 years were perfect, everyone paid, everyone got on just fine, neighbours' dinners in the summer, kids playing in the pool, it was all hunky dory. But then some neighbours started to sell and move elsewhere. Others rented their properties out and tenants who had a completely different profile to the previous 'majority' moved in and the original 'majority' were now the minority and life wasn't as pleasant as before. Problems started to arise in the maintenance, people started missing their payments on the community charges and everyday you'd see a new faces. People would start abusing the community rules and regulations and it was a constant argument and challenges everyday. It wasn't anything like "life" before. We eventually moved as well. Living in a community has great advantages but one really needs to research the community as much as possible to get a real sense of what it is like to live there and then all you can do is cross your figures it doesn't change. My wife is all for communities, I however am more inclined to live in an independant house. At present we are living in a fantastic  urbanisation in Valencia ( its obvious who took that decision) and at the moment everything is "hunky dory"; impeccable, winter pool, summer pool, gym, kids play ground, all working and so far no problems with the neighours. Let's see how long it lasts.....!

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I love my house in Spain, just wish I could move it off an urbanization. Too many stories to recite here but it is cliquey, there have been 'secret' meetings, there have been problem neighbours (although not at the moment) I have no trust or confidence in the president and the developer still has a lot of influence, well he runs the place really. If we lived there full time we would be looking to move somewhere 'independant'. It must be good to find one that works well and meets your expectations.

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personally i just cant see how urbanisations can and do work.

i have temporarily lived on they werent to my liking but when the old funds were low i needed to bite the bullet.

dont run round naked,
dont have sex in the pool
dont have wild all night orgys

they were always complaining at me

 

but seriously all the comminity type things in the uk like the tower blocks and shared areas like that are generally ghethos in the uk and it didnt work in the 60s in the uk so how could it work in spain.

but

why do all the people that complaing about living in communitys live in them?
buy a private villa in its iown 2 acre grounds with a pool and then you are responsible for yourself.

yep

wil cost a million or so in some areas and rather than a small community fee you need your own staff to lok after it when you are there and not there if its a holiday home.

if you dont have the money to buy a villa thn dont complain if you can only afford an urbanisation.

simple as that

its your life and you choose what to do

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 Mungry you would have gone down like a house on fire in my community! :) 

Personally I think an independant house is the only way to guarantee a peaceful life 'indefinately'. Communities can be fun if you find the right mix and certainly cheaper in terms of maintanance etc. So there are pros and cons for everything, but given the choice I would always have an independant house outside of a community.

 

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