Sometimes we get enquiries from people who know they want to live in Valencia and then tell us they are looking at Alicante too. It's an obvious mistake to make as Alicante is a part of the Valencian community but is not Valencia… it's Alicante. Equally this is true to the North of Valencia with Castellón, it's a part of the Valencian Community too but it's also a province in its own right. The thing that most people don't get is that if you haven't made that decision beforehand then you haven't done much research because you are comparing chalk with cheese when you compare Valencia and Alicante in general or indeed Valencia and Castellón.

I recorded the latest podcast a couple of weeks ago and went through some of the questions we had been sent as voice notes, thanks to all of you who sent voice notes in for that. One question specifically interested me as a longer blog post and that is all about why you can't buy that empty property, or rather why are there so many properties that are neither inhabited or for sale and the answers are so many it was worth answering in longer form here. Today on the blog we are going to look at the main reasons and some of the more uncommon reasons. Some of them are very surprising.

Two and a half years ago we wrote the most useful post ever on the blog (From our point of view definitely and from what our clients say quite often from theirs). It was a post about letting us know exactly what you are looking for when you are moving to Valencia, the first step to buying property in Valencia. It was the most useful because it got clients thinking about exactly what they wanted on buying here and it allowed us to have an excellent communication tool for our team actually written down. The majority of our sales come through this channel as the first point of communication with the second being the individual property enquiries from the main Valencia Property site and the third being the Valencia Property Podcast (more on that later)

What I'm talking about today on the blog is about what it means to give a service to clients as an estate agency in Valencia and comparing that to what we hear about others. We recognise that you have a choice when you come to Valencia of which buyer's agent to work with, which agency to trust and even which medium term rental agency to book a property with. We know about the online scams and have talked about them on the blog previously. So today it's time to look at what marks us out as different, it's not just Joyce and Kafka, it's not just readable property descriptions and making sure things stay fun... it's professionalism, empathy and understanding from the start

After the arguments over whether we should have listed a property (which we essentially called overpriced and not worth it) I thought it time to give you an update of Valencia Property's rules for listing properties. Now we are no ordinary estate agent, as I explained in the article about why we listed a particular property. Our regular followers continue to be regular followers because of our honesty, general vibe of the listings and heavy sarcasm/sense of humour (Delete as appropriate) as well as the fact that they are interested in moving to Valencia. You can read the article about why we listed a particular property on our Substack (And maybe subscribe while you're there, we'll wait here for you to read it on the new tab and come back to continue here.

The latest property market data confirms what we've long known at Valencia Property: we're the undisputed leader when it comes to helping American buyers find their perfect home in Valencia. Whether you're searching for a spacious house in the leafy suburbs of L'Eliana or a vibrant apartment in the heart of Ruzafa and Ensanche, our agency consistently delivers more successful purchases for American clients than all other agencies combined. Yes you heard that right, ALL OF THE OTHERS COMBINED. You can see our previous post about this here. Our position has now been cemented even further.

A decade of transformation has made Valencia more popular than ever. In today's post we are going to look at what it means for people looking to call the city and indeed Spain their home. Something remarkable happened in Valencia over the last ten years. While Madrid and Barcelona grabbed headlines with soaring prices, Valencia quietly evolved into something special: a major European city where normal people could still afford to live well. Not just survive, but truly thrive.

We get a lot of questions at Valencia Property. We always say there are no such thing as stupid questions (Even though at times there are) and we answer them all. However, we always think that if you are asking a question then others are also wondering about the answer even if they haven't directly asked us the same thing. So in this week's blog post we are looking at the most common questions we have been asked recently and giving you our answers. It's a series we update regularly here on the blog so let's look at the most common recent questions.

We saw an article last week (in Spanish) about how all new build apartments look the same; large, imposing, white cladding and small terraces, the same materials, the same sizes, the same... everything. There's even an Instagram account for these type of blocks @bloque_cebra because they have been baptised here as "Zebra blocks" for obvious reasons. When you see them you know why. They proliferate among the new builds shooting up all over Spain. And Valencia doesn't miss out, in fact certain areas are at the forefront of this building surge. Today we are going to look at this phenomena and investigate what it means for neighbourhoods all over Spain but especially in Valencia.

September has started hot both in terms of the weather and the numbers of clients completing on Valencia Property they have bought and also starting their journey towards getting their own place here in Valencia. Over the last two weeks there has been a major uptick in terms of the numbers of people making their initial contact with us here at Valencia Property and enquiries for properties listed on our homepage. This might be correlated to our new publications which we are putting out on a regular basis (It may be partly because we are back off holiday too or maybe even because we fixed our forms on the website!!) On today's blog post we are looking at our new publications, our previous ones and how you can follow along as we increase those publications to satisfy your demand for reliable information.

We have written before about the rental crisis in Valencia and that continues to be an issue for many people here. Finding a long term rental is fraught with difficulty in various ways. Supply, pricing and acceptance are just three of the issues and we will talk about them today on the blog. We are also going to talk about medium term rentals and our ongoing solution to that issue, Stepping Stone Rentals, how they differ to long term rentals and what is and isn't included in both and then we'll look at short term rentals and the issues caused by Airbnb and other platforms in the housing market.

Valencia has long been celebrated as one of Europe's most progressive and welcoming cities, but what does daily life actually look like for LGBTQ+ residents? We get asked this question all the time and the truth is It's a question we always feel slightly uncomfortable answering, as no matter what we say or how much we believe Valencia to be a progressive, tolerant and safe place, at the end of the day it's always in the back of our collective minds - how would we really know?

You come to Valencia and you start existing on a diet of Paella, (or rice with things as Valencians call anything that isn't just traditional Valencian Paella with chicken, rabbit, green and white beans). Don't you? Although that was mostly true when I got here in the late 1990's, that's not the truth these days. Picture this. You're sipping morning coffee on your private terrace, gazing across the rooftops in Valencia or perhaps even the sparkling Mediterranean Sea, knowing that within a 15-minute stroll or taxi ride from your Valencia apartment, you could be dining at not one, but numerous Michelin-starred restaurants. This isn't a fantasy, this is the reality of calling Valencia home. And in today's blog we are giving you the links you need to book that enticing dinner this evening*

We are back! It's September and we are back working full on after the summer hiatus. We hope you enjoyed the long hot summer, it passed me by a bit as I was mostly away in the north of Spain where it was warm but not too hot. Our team spent time away mostly to the four corners of Europe and North Africa not to mention various different parts of Spain. More about that in our next podcast. One of the most important things we did carry on doing during the summer were our initial Valencia Property consultation calls. We have written about them before here but today we are going to discuss how to set one up now and what we should be talking about on the call. We find that the initial consultation call is probably the most important first step for those who eventually get to buy successfully here in Valencia. We get to know you, you get to know us and you can ask any questions whether they are simple, complicated or even at first glance they may seem stupid to you.

This is a very difficult post to write for various reasons but as the question comes up so often on all social media platforms it's an important one to know if you are planning on moving to Valencia with children. What are the schools like in Valencia? The first thing to recognise is that any move to Valencia with kids will not be successful if you are not happy with the education of them.

Over the last few weeks we have been working hard in the background which is what we do each summer while we are "On Holiday" at Valencia Property. We have put together a book, a full buying guide for getting your own Valencia Property, we have added pages and updated over 100 posts on this blog in the background while addressing issues such as links that no longer worked and more. And the latest thing we have done is to provide you with a checklist for your Valencia Relocation, a step by step guide to what you need to do and the timelines for doing it. So today we thought we would introduce it.

The first week of the summer holidays is over so of course I recorded a podcast and wrote and published a book. Yes, despite the fact that we are officially on holiday at Valencia Property, we agreed three sales last week, have been working on another over the weekend and we have just had the excellent news that a valuation on a property that we had found for one of our clients was 20% above the price they are paying for it. There's another reason to be on our insider list because it didn't even get onto the website.

We got an email on Friday morning... "Can I visit this property today?" In virtually every case that we get this mail the answer is probably "No", because that's not how things work here. Arranging visits takes time and preparation with the selling agent, the owners, timetables (as we are usually booked up well in advance) and more. However, asking that question on the 15th August, a holiday in Valencia and Spain, then you can reliably surmise that the answer will be "there is not a snowball's chance in hell of getting in to see that property today". Apart from that you have to bear in mind one thing that's quite important... we are actually closed. August isn't for visiting houses as we have mentioned before on the blog but it can be the perfect time for preparing for the Autumn rush.