All the latest news from Valencia Property

This is the last week where you do not need an Energy Efficiency Certificate (EEC) to sell or long term rent your house in Spain. If you haven't got one then you need to get one, no excuses, no "well, the dog ate it" and big fines for those who don't in theory.

I promised a few weeks ago that I would be doing 100 videos in the style of "100 Tips for People Moving To Spain" to give you 100 reasons to live in Spain. Well the YouTube project has started with the introduction video and the first three reasons now on the new playlist here.

The British Embassy has just released a video about buying property in Spain. It starts off with a lot of stereotypical images of Spain then takes a look at people's attitudes towards buying in Spain through interviews with those attending the Place in The Sun exhibition a couple of months ago.

Recently on our consultation calls I have been asked one question above all others and that is "Have the interest rate rises affected the market?" This question is coming from all over the World because it seems that they have affected many property markets and slowed markets down in North America, Northern Europe, especially the UK, and other areas. However, the situation here is somewhat different due to the nature of the demand and what is happening with mortgages at the moment. So today I thought we could look at what is happening with the market for mortgages to give you the latest situation.

How good value are the properties down by the Malvarrosa beach in Valencia? Sometimes there is huge value in certain properties that while not being visually stunning will provide one of two things for you: 1) An excellent rental return 2) A great lock up and leave bolthole for your property abroad in a vibrant city.

Sold, sold, sold, sold, sold, sold and a long etcetera. I go away for a week and a half and all hell breaks loose. If anyone thinks that the Spanish property market is dead then they should have been in Valencia last week. I wasn't.

I was recently asked to make a quick video showing where I work and to make it a little quirky. Therefore I did and I put it on YouTube as unlisted so only the people in the group where I was asked to do it could see it. Everyone seemed to like it. Therefore I decided today to make it a public one. This is where I work.

Spanish Property Magazine 13 is out. And this time I am not calling it SPM13 for the iPad. Why not? Well now if you have an iphone you can also download the magazine and take a look then subscribe to get more. Click on the image to get yours but read below to see what is in it.

Once upon a time a very, very long time ago there was a country where the people were reasonable. In this country people were not driven by greed, people were not driven by stupidity and people were not driven by their own, totally unreasonable, expectations.

Just like in English there is a totally unspoken language within property adverts in Spain. Where in English you need to read between the lines and understand that "bijou", "compact" and "cozy" all mean "Oh my god never mind a cat you couldn't even swing a hamster in here" Spanish Property Adverts have their own language and you need to understand it before making any decisions to view.

This is the 800th post in Houses For Sale In Spain. That is a lot of posts! Starting before the crisis in Spain when the website was a blogger blog called Valencia Comment (You can see the first post here) the blog has developed over the years keeping people interested in buying property in Spain up to date with developments in the Spanish Property Market and Spain itself.

You are born, you go to school, you get a job, and eventually you die. Surely there's something better in the middle. We are on this small planet for threescore years and 10 apparently. If that is the case why would you spend a lot of that time working in a box with the same day to day routine boring you until you retire and get a clock. Work in the world is changing now and so should your mentality be. Let's face it, those days are now long gone when you worked 40-45 years in the same business that you had no interest in, making money for the owner who you never knew and then you retired and you got your carriage clock.

It's November and it's still 27-30 degrees during the day here in Valencia. It's not normally like this of course, except it is. As the dark nights envelop much of the North of Europe sunset here is around 6pm and it gets dark around 6.30. It's like that every year of course and we have the brightness and sunshine every year.

As we are into December I thought it was time to let you know about how the Spanish Property Market has gone in 2013. Obviously this is biased towards the Valencia region with my main catchment area being there through Valencia Property but also with the new project The Spanish Property Network we also have trends and tendencies from the rest of Spain to look at.

I have been reinstalling the Mac over the last few days after it went into intensive care and came out with a brand spanking new reformat. This has given me time to take a look at some photos as they got reinstalled. So according to iPhoto this year I have 5549 photos imported , quite a few. So there are just a few a month to tell the story of the year. I have put them on Facebook in this album.

I published this article this morning on the Spanish Property Network and the reaction was so good that I thought you might want to read it here too in case you don't know about the SPN yet. What are ten of the things that make living in Spain different? What do people miss when they leave or look forward to when they are thinking of buying in Spain? Take a look.

When you purchase a property in Spain you have to pay tax on the purchase, currently in Valencia for new and used properties the tax is 10%, in fact it is 10% on new property all around the country. In Madrid for example the cost on used property is currently 6% having been reduced at the start of the year. The cost in other areas varies from 7-10%. However you may be in for a nasty surprise unless you take certain precautions when finding yourself a bargain. Let's look at an example.

Over the last couple of days I have been sent a couple of videos about Valencia that have made me very happy. Why? Well simply put they are feelgood videos about a city beginning to wake up to the spring at the same time that it realises that it doesn't need to hide its light under a bushel because simply put it is beautiful and well worth showing off.