All the latest news from Valencia Property

The latest of our 100 tips for moving to and living in Spain is now up on our Facebook page. Go to Valencia Property on Facebook to see it here. This one talks about swimming pools in Spain and what you should be thinking about when you are buying a place with a swimming pool. Do you know how to look after it?

We have our own website which we keep up to date at all times of course. As soon as a deposit is left on a property we mark it as under offer or sold and then once the final signing comes we take it off the site. Unfortunately, the property portals are not as quick as us. They use a system of feeds taken from individual websites which show properties and we pay for the privilege of putting our properties on their sites because in theory they have greater reach and we should get more enquiries

This may not seem very important at the moment when you are locked down and unable to travel but it looks like Spain will be opening up for the summer perhaps with a vaccine passport, perhaps through travel corridors. Most people are talking about being able to go on holiday safely but others are waiting to be able to come to Spain and buy their new home or holiday property.

I wrote something on Facebook last night about what is happening in the Valencia Property market and I promised to expand on why I think this is happening. Let's get the caveats out of the way. We are sure to be called liars and typical agents talking up the market and stuff but, as Rafa Benitez once said, here are some facts: Today we tried to arrange some visits for a client for Friday. Out of the ten properties we wanted to see five have sold in the last week. All have deposits left on them and mostly at asking price!

This time last year we were well into the first week of our severe lockdown. The Fallas fiestas had been cancelled on the 10th of March after quite a few Mascletas had already happened, Levante had played their last home game on the 8th of March with 3000 fewer fans than normal, many choosing to avoid the match due to fears about the new virus and on the 14th of March the Spanish government ordered lockdown... and it started to rain in Valencia...

We have been asked to explain a bit more about the "Community". The majority of people in Spain live in apartments and if you want to join them then you need to get used to the idea of "The Community" (Homeowners' Association in the States). Today we look at what the community is, what it does and what issues you may have with the people you live with. This is not just for people buying apartments though, oftentimes you will find that there are community costs with houses which we shall also look at.

Described by many as Valencia's bohemian heart, by others as Valencia's Soho and by East Coast Americans as Valencia's Greenwich village, Ruzafa has long been on our radar as a great place to live due to its proximity to the centre of Valencia, the vibe of the area and the classical facades amongst other reasons. However there are others who describe it as overhyped, too noisy and a bit grotty. Of course the truth lies somewhere in between but on a scale you would get closer to the former descriptions rather than the latter. Today we are going to explore some of those reasons.

After receiving a few enquiries about whether it's better to rent or buy a property in Valencia I thought it time to put together a post comparing the two options in terms of costs and what your "get out position" is at the end. Obviously there are other considerations apart from monetary costs but we will focus here on the costs and then look at those other considerations at the end. We are going to go with a similar property in both cases and look at five, ten and twenty year horizons. For the numbers we are going to use an example from last week where the client took on a mortgage at a fixed rate over 20 years.

Not the usual type of post today but just to let everyone know that a new activity starts up in Valencia today. After a few weeks of evening practice under the Alameda bridge in Valencia, cricket comes to Valencia at the baseball pitch in the riverbed from around 2.30pm onwards. A touring team comprised mostly of Aussies and New Zealanders but based in London is in Valencia for a game of cricket against the Levante Select XI. Our first game. We may have to ask them to go easy on us.

The Spanish Golden Visa for non EU citizens has brought many people into Spain from all parts of the World to enjoy free movement around the Schengen area, security for their families and an excellent quality of life in a safe and accommodating country. All around Spain people have been buying up places to live so they can enjoy the rights that a Golden Visa gives them. We have sold many properties to clients as part of a portfolio so they can get the Golden Visa but it is much more common for clients to buy a single property over the threshold of 500k and use that as their base for exploring the rest of Europe

One question we get asked often is do I have to be in Valencia (Or Spain) to buy a property? Many people, especially investors, want to buy their property now but for various reasons (travel restrictions, Covid, timing, work) they cannot get here right away. This week we even had a client who asked if the owner could wait until September to start the process to purchase a property they wanted to buy because that will likely be the first time they are able to visit. Of course the answer was "No!"

The answer to the question "Why are you always droning on about Valencia?" is self evident. There's a lot to write about, it's a great place to write about and we actually enjoy it. Whether the droning on is on our instagram page with great images of houses and places in Valencia, making videos for our Youtube page, updating our Facebook page without fomenting a potential revolution and storming of the Capitol building, making walkthrough and flyaround videos of properties for our potential clients like the one below or just writing stuff like this post on the blog.

After writing a few days ago about lockdown properties in Valencia for all price ranges and starting with the 50-300k brackets, today we are looking at your options for lockdown properties at higher price ranges. We are going to start just under the 300k threshold as an owner has just sent us some lovely new photos of his place in Serra and then we will move onto higher price ranges and show you what your money can buy for you both inside and outside the city.