All the latest news from Valencia Property

The last two weeks in Valencia have had people complaining about the heat but funnily enough it is not actually as hot as normal according to the numbers, just around 32 degrees every day. However we are getting a really humid period at the moment and you walk around dripping. This is not the case in all parts of Spain, Madrid is a lot hotter but dry, Seville just gets seriously hot, North West Spain copies the UK weather patterns, rain, sunny spells and if it isn't raining it has just rained or it's about to rain.

We do very few rentals but every year in September we have an influx of teachers and parents coming into the international schools looking for rental property. Therefore we take on some good properties for rental in the city as this is where the majority of the teachers want to live and we take on some villas for the parents and their families.

I went on holiday last week to my favourite place in Spain, Asturias. Why is it my favourite? The food and the people. Why couldn't I live there, the food! Honestly I would be at least twenty kilos heavier if I lived in Asturias. The food is voluminous and gorgeous. The weather isn't great in Asturias you know. It is not called the green coast for no reason. It rains. We were there for ten days and we had two full beach days possible although we did actually go to the beach more than that, not too much just enough to not get bored.

I was looking in YouTube at a few things today and came upon this video of Valencia. Not seen it before so I thought you might like to see it too. It includes most of the things that you can se when you come to Valencia and bear in mind that taking pictures in Valencia is different at different times of day and year.

After a hiatus we are back with our summer special. Some actual positive news out of Spain and a few stories you may have missed under the radar because it seems that only bad news sells. So Spain is Different 20 can be seen here with stories including: 1) If Not France, Why Not Spain? 2) A Tourist Visit To Aragón 3) The A-Z of Seville

Always being one to innovate and make things different I thought it time to incorporate some new things into the property platform and blog. So anyway what is new and coming up? 1) This is not ground breaking at all but it will complement the current presentation of properties well. There is an app on the ipad and iphone called Magic Plan. I have normally not got time to get the plans done of properties unless the owners can provide one. However I have my daughter working with me over the summer and she is supplying me with plans of properties that are on the site

You may have noticed a lack of posts in the last few weeks on the blog. This is due to the usual stupor of the Spanish summer and also to me having been on holiday for ten days in France. Anyway I got back and had promised you some pictures from the wildfires that had affected Valencia so I went out the other day and took some on the Altury Estate and around Turis.

I really hate writing articles when an open goal is presented and it is like shooting fish in a barrel but the French government has just presented Spain with a historic opportunity. What’s happened? Well the Spanish government has started to try and encourage foreign investment by two measures: Firstly, as a foreigner, if you buy a property this year then they have cut any potential capital gains tax in half. Secondly, and this one is under consideration at the moment, if you buy a property for more than 250,000 euros then you may well be granted automatic residency (a nod to the far East buyers and eastern Europe perhaps) Couple this with the prices having fallen by around 40% from peak and there is a great opportunity to pick up some excellent bargain property in Spain.

Tired of all of the sniping at Spain? Hating the way Spain is presented in the press? Like to point out the good points about Spain? Me too. Therefore along with a group of friends, Writers and Bloggers about Spain (Our Facebook group) we created the hashtag #SpainIs... on twitter in order to promote the positivity about the country despite all of the problems. And guess what? It was a major success. Here is a report in Sur in English newspaper about it

Last week, tragedy hit the Valencia region. You may have heard about it and you may not but over 48500 hectares of interior Valencia was burnt by wildfires. How does this compare with other fires? Well you may have seen that Obama visited the scenes of the Colorado wildfires and have been horrified by the images presented. Valencia’s fires covered an area five times greater

It has been over 40 degrees which is very unusual but it looks like it will be ten degrees less tomorrow which is when the practice starts for the Valencia Grand Prix. Who will win this year? Well whoever gets to the first corner first probably ;-) Let's hope we at least have a Mark Webber moment to liven things up. The point of all this of course is that this is the last year when Valencia will have a Grand Prix every year. In future it will take turns with Barcelona. However this shouldn't effect the real estate market in the Cabanyal area of Valencia as it has fallen a long way on the back of broken promises to gentrify the area and extend Blasco Ibañez Avenue down to the beach.

I don't want to sound like a vulture here but the current malaise brought on Spain by the markets is having a positive effect in certain ways. The banks are being forced to lower their ridiculously optimistic prices on their stock of properties in many cases and there are finally some decent prices around. In the last few weeks we have sold various properties from various banks but among them are a couple of well positioned apartments in Valencia that we have managed to get for clients at bargain prices. The majority of the stuff from banks continues to be overpriced, which may change, badly located, which will never be changed and badly advertised, which again will probably not change.

The nineteenth issue of Spain is Different is now out. It is a cornucopia of posts from a Facebook group I have of Writers and Bloggers About Spain. Of course on the suggestion of Yolanda, one of the members of the group, we should rename it as "Writers Against Bullsh*it About Spain" due to a lot of the rubbish being put out there at the moment especially in the Mail and Telegraph.

So you wake up every morning and you open your blinds or curtains to this. It's a traditional image of Spain of course, an apartment or house overlooking the Mediterranean with endless blue skies and bright light getting rid of the memories of the shocking slate grey skies over most of northern Europe most of the time. However you pay for views. A comparable property but without the views may cost just half of what a property with view will cost. The question is of course how much of a premium are you prepared to pay to have your own little view of paradise?

"It's Bucharest Stupid" and a load of other stories from the last two weeks in Spain. Follow the Athletic Bilbao fans on their odyssey around Europe and find out why it doesn't pay to get a geographical illiterate to plan your trip of a lifetime. Stories this week include 1) Black Economy news 2) Why Spain WILL leave the Euro (According to one economist)? 3) The robot fish sniffing out pollution in Asturias 4) Social Media in the Canary Islands

I have witnessed a great debate in my "Writers and Bloggers About Spain" Facebook group this week. It related to what to do when a teacher calls you in to point out that your child is probably working too hard and getting everything right and is a “bit independent”. Nothing wrong there I hear you say. Well obviously the teacher thought it relevant to flag it as a problem.