Estate agents

Now...I know this is the wrong topic... but what is it with Estate Agents and their ability to not read the newspapers..."Of course sir, this area of spain is exempt from dropping prices"

We made an offer to one...name shall be withheld and they refused to give it the buyer as it might upset them or make them angry...well as they have not had one offer since May 08...and no-one is looking at it...how is that possible

In this day an age any offer is better than no offer...at least it enables you to see if there is any interest...I should know I came from the Irish market and aslmost had the skin off my back as well as my shirt...

When I gave my perception of the market, the response was an incredulous, "We are not seeing that here" the amazing thing is there is a glut of properties...prices are dropping, distressed sales are increasing along with repoessions

Articles like this abound.....and in this little corner of the world some of the agents seem to be off with the fairies...

http://www.spanishpropertyinsight.com/buff/2008/11/property-prices-must-fall-23-for-market-to-return-to-normality-says-new-report/

Anyone else have any better experience?

Hi pknott,

I hope an answer from an estate agent is ok.

Basically the market in Spain as the UK is dire at the moment, mortgage lending is restricted,the pound is weaker than a bad coffee and buyers are very thin on the ground.

I would say prices have dropped slightly in the window but its the offers where you see the biggest difference.

With the switch in power from sellers to a buyers market offers are expected and if you don't get what you want for he right price,move on.

At the moment you have a mixture of desperate and in some cases near bankrupt builders that will buckle under negotiation,just this aftrernoon i have been negotiating with a builder for a client,what they wanted was a bit cheeky but after plenty of No's we finally got a yes.

I did have to explain to the builder that the market was not good....! he seemed to have forgot.....so it took 8 No's for this particular ostrich to raise its head.

On the other side you have vendors that have either overstretched themselves or came to Spain under the illusion that for every orange treees there are 2 with money hanging off them.

They will take an offer if the agent will put it forward...when i was trained as an agent (1987) we were called negotiators,this was for a reason,funnily enough our job was to negotiate a sale beteween two parties,the puppies these days think a suit and a mobile are all the qualifications you need,of course a lot of the agents here in Spain are plumbers who chose the career as a promise of riches...now the monkey wrench is calling back the monkies...(no offence to plumbers meant,just an anology) could have easily have been taxi driver.

So,my advice to anyone out there who is thinking of buying,make an offer and get the agent to put it through while you stand there, as an agent in the UK you must put any offer forward in writing within 24 hrs,you can be struck off for this if you do not do so,this is called an FNO.

In these times negotiation skills are needed far more than ever.

Nowhere is exempt from a bad worldwide economy,the clues in the title...

The market will be back when the world sorts its life out but for now if you have the power and the pennies use it well, i have seen some unbelievable prices around so hunt them down and if your aim is the lifestyle not the fast buck you may be patting on the back the idiots who got us into this mess.

(personally,i blame the bank managers and analysts,but thats a story for another thread)

I totall agree with Georgia on this one.

However, there are a few exceptions to take into account.  When I take a property on, I thrash out with the vendor what would be his absolute bottom price. We get to a point where the vendors mistrust me and thinks all I am doing is trying to rob him of his profit. This is not my intention. The reason I need to know his bottom price is because I know there will be offers,  If the offer is way below the absolute bottom price I will send an email or phone the vendor just to record the offer and prove I have had interest in the property.

Recently a property I had on the books was bank valued at €355,000.  The owner wanted €288,000, but his absolute bottom price was €250,000. Because he had a mortgage of €210,000 he would only clear around €20,000 after costs. This after owning the property for 4 years.

So a prospective buyer offered €150,000 - an idiotic offer from an idiot!!  I did not inform the owner of this silly amount and told the prospective buyer/idiot that I would not. He was almost red with rage but I will not placate idiots at any cost.  I asked him to go away and offer elsewhere.

In short, if you offer too little, you are a chancer, and chancers are not generally liked by Estate Agents, because usually they are twits with too much time on their hands.

Had the offer been around €220,000 or more, I would have considered advising the vendor to think seriously about it, even though he would make a small loss after paying off the mortgages and fees, he would have saved €1500 per month in high mortgage repayments.

So, offers are not offers if they are rediculously too low, they are just simply annoying.

I would agree....sort of...there are properties that are selling for less than 60-70% of the asking price. I suppose the question goes down to who actually sets the price. If the owner sets the price at a value that is above where other properties are, then they are in for a very rude awakening. In the area in which I now reside, properties valued at €1.3m a year ago are now valued at €900,000 and have sold at €600,000. The excesses of the market are now coming back to bite those who are now in a difficult position. So there are a large number of bargains to be had if the price is incorrectly set

IMHO buyers are hard to come by now and they will be even harder if the recession we are in continues to bite further into peoples pockets. A property is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it, and an offer made now may seem harsh or even ridiculous....but in 6 months time when no further offers have been made and the seller has paid a further 6 months of mortgage payments then it will become more attractive by the moment.

So how do I know this, well I have just come out of the Irish market which by any shakes of the imagination was well overpriced and reached 25% increases annually, not disimilar to Spain. We were in the position of having to take what there was available, which we would have thought ridiculous 12 months ago, but we got out in time, and now will approach the market here the way in which we were approached when selling out home.

From my experience this is not a time to sell, so the message should be unless you have to sell....don't. If you have a home then view it as a home, not an investment as the days of multiple % increases are gone...for the medium term, all pundits seem to believe that the current market in Spain is overvalued by 20-30% so I for one will continue to offer at this level, based on what I think a property is worth to me.....

PJ Knott - slight difference between spain and ireland. it is the yellow thing in the sky

You are not kidding...also the one thing we have notice which is worth its weight in gold...our kids have not had one cold yet...back in Ireland they would have been backwards and forewards to the doctors multiple times...here's a massive thumbs up for living in this wonderful country we now call home!!