All the latest news from Valencia Property

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.

When you are looking to come and live in Spain and maybe to buy a house for sale in Spain you are going to a different country (Obvious huh?) with different customs and different ways of doing things. Therefore there are some things that you will need to get used to. Spain will not change in the near future but you need to do so if you want to fit comfortably into your new home (the house and the area).

It is a well known fact that sales of property in Spain are at historically low figures at the moment when compared with other years. However the figures themselves are skewed somewhat by the fact that they do not tend to distinguish between the diminished internal demand (due to lack of credit and the ongoing crisis meaning that Spain has effectively been in a crushing recession since 2007) and the soaring international demand for Spanish property that has now reached or even exceded 2007 levels in many areas due to the low prices, favourable exchange rate and the fact that many other countries are now exiting their own recessions.

We posted a very popular post on the Spanish Property Blog last week.Titled "The Four Horsemen of the Spanish Property Apocalypse". Within it we explained how to get a bargain in Spain without going to a bank for their rather badly located properties. Take a look and if you have any questions just ask. When you are looking for a property as a buyer you are obviously looking for a bargain that suits your requirements. Those requirements will be exclusive to you, ie different from anyone else, but you can almost guarantee that the property you buy will have many of the characteristics that others are searching for too (This is why we said that there are not actually that many properties really for sale in Spain here) One thing that you are looking for though is summed up in the Spanish Property search mantra "Bueno, Bonito y Barato" (Good, pretty and cheap)

In October last year the Valencian government in its infinite wisdom (ie none) decided to raise purchase taxes on second hand property from 8% to 10%, immediately putting themselves at a disadvantage with other communities in Spain (Madrid dropped theirs to 6% in January for example). It was a stupid move that I described in depth on this blog post

I love getting feedback from clients especially when it is good. Today I got a glowing reference from a client and thought it would be nice to share it on here. Thanks to Christine for the kind words and I hope that I can help other people in the same way. For those who are not on Facebook you can read it below. For those that are why don't you like the page so you get more information about property in Spain and Valencia in particular.

As you are maybe aware we have been running a series on our Youtube channel called 100 Reasons to Live in Spain. Some are more obvious, some are a bit obscure and some are a bit left field. I have just put up the latest two on the channel and you can see them embedded in this post.

On my personal site www.grahamhunt.co we recently posted a blog about ten things you should be doing every day in Spain. You can see it at the link. However we have also recorded it using Auphonic, loaded it onto our Soundcloud page and placed it into Youtube too. You can also listen to it below. So if you prefer listening to reading then take a listen below and take to heart the ten things you should be doing every day in Spain.

I spend a lot of my time online telling people "We have a blog post about that" And that's because we get asked the same questions over and over and we use those questions as the basis for blog posts. However, at times we get questions that floor us, not because we don't know the answer but because, well... just because. Now you dear reader haven't got a single stupid question in your head, we know that and respect you for it. But we also know that despite the fact that you wouldn't ask a stupid question that there are others in the World who might and it seems that many of those people inhabit the nether regions of Facebook or they just send me a whatsapp out of the blue and say something like, "Does Spain have debit cards?" or "Have you ever seen this product in Spain as I am thinking of moving there and want to import them?" or "Does your website require our SEO services?" (Whoops that last one is just the constant stream of spam) The answers of course are yes, no and not from you.

Valencia's beach to the North of the Port is divided into three areas; the Cabanyal, the Malvarrosa and the Patacona (For purposes of this article we divide it into four). However it really is just one long and very sandy beach with an excellent promenade that you will find people skating, cycling and jogging up and down every day all year round. The beach area is not overdeveloped as great measures have been taken to make sure that there was no massive property development that could spoil the feel of the area. However this has meant that for many years it was ignored. Now things are changing and even the Valencians are starting to appreciate what an underused and excellent asset the city has. To find out why we need to look back at the history of the city.

This post originally appeared on the Spanish Property Network because we have had a major problem with this blog for about two weeks not being able to post anything. Well finally the blog is working again so here it is. A couple of our clients decided to write down their reasons why they wanted to move to Valencia and they passed it onto me to put into the blog. I think it gives a very good overview of the thought process and reasons why a young couple, in this case from Eastern Europe, may want to come to live in a vibrant city like Valencia. Take a look. Take it away Piotr.

Surprisingly Spain for a large country mostly surrounded by sea comes only 34th on the list of countries with the longest coastline. Measuring in at 7268km of coastline according to the World Resources Institute on Wikipedia, Spain's coastline includes the Canary Islands and the Balearics of course but in terms of perception Spain is either number one in World coastal resorts or very close. In July 2014 alone a new record of more than 8.3 million tourists visited Spain and the vast majority of those headed to the coastal regions.

In April I wrote this article about Valencia's Property Taxes. I thought you might like an update to the story as over the last few days I have been corresponding with three different potential Valencia Property buyers who are worried about their potential tax liability (they haven't come through my company but they found the article and contacted for clarifications) We are now five months further down the line from the original post and the situation is a little clearer (Translation: It is still a mess).