All the latest news from Valencia Property

As cities become ever more expensive and communications improve we get more and more people asking us for country properties with lots of land to... have horses, run a smallholding, have a small hotel, raise sheep or goats and plenty of other ideas which all seem perfectly reasonable on first look until they hit something called "Spanish reality". Today's post is all about why we can't/won't be helping you to achieve those dreams unfortunately.

The old riverbed in Valencia makes up the biggest garden in Spain. Starting at the new Parque de la Cabecera near to the stunning Bioparc zoo and stretching down past the City of Arts and Sciences for a full 9km, the "Antiguo Cauce del Turia" (Old Turia Riverbed) makes up the biggest garden in Spain. However everyone who comes to Valencia looking for a property always asks the same two questions, why is it here and where is the river then?

We have written before about choosing a lawyer for your Valencia Property purchase and you can read the article at the link. Within that article we talked about how to choose your lawyer and the whole process of doing that. What we didn't talk about is what they do and this is important because you don't get to see it. All the work is done in the background and the only communication you may have with the lawyer is them telling you "It's Ok to pay the deposit now" and "Final date for the notary can be set now". We maybe should have called this article "What your Valencia Property lawyer ACTUALLY does" but we thought that maybe that was a bit on the nose as most people's impression is contained in the picture below.

By now you are probably aware of the blaze that happened last week in Valencia totally enveloping two buildings in less than an hour fanned by 60km/h winds and fed by cladding similar to that used on Grenfell Tower in the UK. At the time of writing the death toll is into double figures and we say just as well that the fire started in the early evening when most people were out and about. If this had happened at night then the tragedy would have been inevitably much worse.

We recently listed a property in Benimaclet and described it somewhat controversially as the best neighbourhood in Valencia. The author of the listing will now be called to account at our next meeting sometime in the dim and distant future and if they can't justify that description they will be summararily executed of course. However, some people agree that Benimaclet is the best, or at least one of the best, neighbourhoods in Valencia, even though it is largely overlooked. Today though we thought we would look at the candidates for that title, why they are popular, who they are popular for and where they are in the city so that you get more of an idea of the layout of Valencia and what surprises may lie in store for you around every corner.

Over the years we have had thousands of clients visiting us at Valencia Property and they have all had to stay somewhere when they came to visit us of course. Back in the day we used to almost always be picking people up to go on their visits to see properties from hotels. Sometimes they would be in guest houses outside the city and then Airbnb arrived and suddenly we were picking up people from areas all around the city and further afield. Of course over the last few months since we started up our new venture we have had people staying in our Stepping Stone Rental properties as they have decided that their initial stay was going to be three months rather than a flying visit for as week or two.

Here at Valencia Property we look for good value properties for our clients. Of course this doesn't mean cheap properties, we often work with clients looking to get their Spanish Golden Visa through buying property in Valencia so we often see property right at the top of the range in the best areas of Valencia. However, there are also properties that we just don't have clients for usually so we don't list them (Maybe if we did we would get clients for them, chicken and egg and all that) Most of these properties are those at the top, top end of the market and the reason we don't list them usually is that we can find better in better locations or for better prices. As an example we would never advise anyone to spend 6 million Euros on a property in Monasterios but properties there cost up to that amount and sometimes more.

Firstly, let's get the formalities out of the way shall we? Seasons Greetings to everyone as this will be the last full blog post before the New Year, we may have a mini post in the next week but we produced an extra full blog a few days ago all about Stepping Stone Rentals and the available properties we currently have, you can read it here. For the first time ever we managed to get all of those that work with us locally together last week: Valencia Property, Dutch Valencia Property, Stepping Stone Rentals and the Valencia Remodels team came together in one place last week for our Xmas meal and that is the main image that accompanies this article. Say hello to Marije, Paul, David, me, Jess, Maria, Jesse, Gavin and Catherine and of course we look forward to saying hello to you and welcoming you to Valencia.

Welcome to the second part of our study of the areas in and around the city that you should be thinking of in each price range when looking to buy property Valencia. Today we are looking at prices from 300k up to and above 1 million Euros. Remember that last week we looked into the lower price ranges and you can see that post here. We also introduce our latest revamped podcast where we have a discussion about what could possibly go wrong in your Valencia Property purchase and start our new series Valencia Stories with a cautionary tale.

One of the questions that we are always asked is where is the best place to buy a property in Valencia? This is true for those wanting a city apartment or a property in the suburbs and as always our answer is "Well, it depends". And the two big deciding factors in this are "What is Your Budget? and "What are you looking for?" Because while it may be true that the most popular areas of Valencia include Ruzafa, Ensanche and the Cabanyal it's also true that prices are higher there than in other areas so your budget may not allow you to buy there depending on your requirements. Outside the city the same is true, the best known towns such as L'Eliana, Ribarroja, Betera and the like are often outside the budgets of many people so what we try to find for people are other suitable and excellent options.

The first Spanish Property Magazine for iPad of 2013 is now up in the app store for download. Subscribers should have it already pushed to their devices. Included this month are articles about the reaction to the government's proposal to allow residency for anyone spending over 160k, an overview of what 2013 may hold in the Spanish Property Market and a look at the changes in taxes and costs of purchase in Spain, how Spain is benefitting from World events and the second part of both Nick Snelling's overview of the modern history of Spain and the Estate Agent Nightmares series

I wrote a Note on the Valencia Property Facebook page that was quite well received. Click on the link to see it there and like the page while there if you want ;-). However I thought those people who don't use Facebook may like to take a look too. So here are 15 things that Brits say when in Spain that demonstrate that they don't understand the country... yet!

What do you say when somebody actually says something to you that is so ridiculous that it defies belief? This is a question that you could ask every day to estate agent as some people seem to think that the property defies the laws of supply and demand, the law of price gravity, legality itself, in fact it just defies any laws at all.

I am often asked by clients what type of property i would buy. Well the answer is very simple really, the one I live in!. However that is because it suits my lifestyle. Lifestyle is the big issue. If my situation were different then I would have a different answer of course. Listen to the audio below as I explain the background to why I chose the property I did.

One of the things that people are doing a lot more in Valencia now is coming to live here for extended periods and studying Spanish in one of the many schools set up just for that purpose. Many of them are taking medium term rentals in the city and all of them generally want a central Valencia apartment walking distance to the school they are studying at.

I was left stunned last night because after so many years I have never seen a nighttime Mascleta. I will be keeping an eye out for them in the future for sure.

The majority of the Fallas fiestas this year fall at the weekend and also a Spanish holiday so expect Valencia to be absolutely packed this weekend as people come in to see the wonders that are here. Some of the Fallas models are beyond belief of course.