- This topic has 14 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by
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Hi Mark,
Just a quick question.
Are there more visitors to the forum than of late? It always seems to me that there are always more guests online than has been the case this past couple of years. Would that be accurate or am I just imagining things?
Be nice to see a bit more activity, be nice to see a few more people posting also, the rest of us must look very tired, dusty and dog eared to regular readers what with all the bites we been taking out of each other.
It would be interesting to know if there is a newer audience out there, after we probably put the old one off altogether.
Chris
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If there are then they are looking for solutions to problems that they never envisaged when buying in Spain, due to incompetence, corruption and a totally unprofessional attitude to those that are so called “professionals”
I can’t believe given the current financial climate and an impending Euro crisis that anyone would consider visiting this forum with the intention of buying in Spain!
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I’m still waiting to buy. And I will be buying soon, unless PP goes Franco. I tried buying earlier this year, but it just didn’t work out: First place had structural problems, second and third places had owners who were stuck in 2007 price-wise. I’m glad that it didn’t work out because early next year I expect to be paying even less than I had planned.
Aren’t we supposed to buy low and sell high?
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I have worked as an agent earlier and I will be buying in the near future “1-10 years”. At the moment most things are still overpriced but you can find a few gems out there but only in the second hand market. You can see that the prices are still wrong because so few transactions are occuring.
Dealing with banks is useless so don’t waste your time on them.
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In answer to your question Chris, my overall traffic is up on last year but basically steady. The forum, however, is down. But as of the start of this year I haven’t made it easy to join this forum so I’m not surprised.
On the other question, I think there are still plenty of people who would like to buy in Spain, (those that can afford to) but many are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how this crisis shakes out. There’s nothing we can do about that.
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I think that this maybe deserves its own thread, but I’ll leave it to Mark to decide.
“The continent is destroying the weak to protect the strong. But will that be enough?” by James K. Galbraith
Or as I would title it, “World War III anyone?“
“The eurozone crisis is a bank crisis posing as a series of national debt crises and complicated by reactionary economic ideas, a defective financial architecture and a toxic political environment, especially in Germany, in France, in Italy and in Greece.
Like our own, the European banking crisis is the product of over-lending to weak borrowers, including for housing in Spain, commercial real estate in Ireland and the public sector (partly for infrastructure) in Greece. The European banks leveraged up to buy toxic American mortgages and when those collapsed they started dumping their weak sovereign bonds to buy strong ones, driving up yields and eventually forcing the whole European periphery into crisis. Greece was merely the first domino in the line.“
. . .
“Underpinning banker power in Creditor Europe is a Calvinist sensibility that has turned surpluses into a sign of virtue and deficits into a mark of vice, while fetishizing deregulation, privatization and market-driven adjustment. The North Europeans have forgotten that economic integration always concentrates industry (and even agriculture) in the richer regions.
As this process unfolds the Germans reap the rents and lecture their newly indebted customers to cut wages, sell off assets, and give up their pensions, schools, universities, healthcare – much of which were second-rate to begin with. Recently the lectures have become orders, delivered by the IMF and ECB, demonstrating to Europe’s new debt peons that they no longer live in democratic states.“
Read more here:
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/10/the_crisis_in_the_eurozone/singleton/
I don’t want to leave the appearance that I am a ‘smug American’ about this, so let me add that it is my sincere hope that somehow the world’s various economic problems get resolved SOON.
As if we Americans have anything to be smug about.
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I think that jp1’s first post on this subject sums things up and I tend to agree with his comments.
Unfortunately, the many rogue agents and their favoured lawyers along with all the other corruption that went on during the boom totally ruined things for those few trying to make good the Spanish property market. The Spanish Gov’t were too slow to respond, the Courts were useless and lengthy, the oversupply and build quality along with coastal destruction also helped crash the market.
And, because of the exchange rate Stg/Euro and worries over the Euro, buying now is virtually a no no for the British.
The only way it makes sense now is to get a discount of 50% plus, and only in prime spots, and look at the long term view.
We have friends with the usual sort of property (townhouse) on a golf course where there are many properties for sale of all sorts, they are extremely worried about the Euro and have put their house on the market. We don’t know how to advise them anymore, other than underprice the property significantly against others and hope to make up some shortfall in the current exchange rate back to sterling. They’ve run out of money to continue living there, can’t claim benefits and must feel desperate. Another lady we know has lost her husband recently, and also can’t move back to UK because her property has more than halved in value and so many others are for sale, what do you do? 😥
The sooner this Euro problem is over the better!
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One important factor, Spanish property sales had hit the bottom well before the banking crisis.
While there were many who were cheerleaders of the Spanish real estate boom, it is banks that enabled it to happen.
If the banks had followed their own business rules and not made risky mortgages to individuals and more importantly, not made risky loans to developers, there would have been slower sales, lesser inflated prices and fewer problems now.
The ‘banking crisis’ is self-inflicted. It has affected millions of people around the world. I have no pity for banks.
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I am not excusing the banks. I was pointing out that if the crisis ends next month and everything was fine in the eurozone it does not necessarily mean that people will be flocking to buy Spanish property as sales had dropped off considerably before ie. 2004/5…geddit
There are other factors why people don’t want to buy….overbuilding (many new blocks you could shake hands with your neighbour). Sub-standard build and fittings, Some developments have serious problems and others are neglected and scruffy. -
I wanted to respond to Chris McCarthy’s original question. I hardly ever log in these days, so rarely I have to request a new password every time! But, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested and whilst there’s an element of predictability about what regular posters will say, at least you’re all consistent!
The reason I still visit, so show up in those visitor numbers is that Spain, particularly Catalonia, has a special attraction and I continue to spend time there, most years and I still think if it makes more sense to rent than to buy when I come to retire, then I might do so. I’m sure this (or something like it) will be true of many people who lurk rather than posting here.
As for buying now, well I bought in St Mary’s on the Scillies, my other great love as anyone whose been there will understand. But this is a Spanish property forum, so you don’t want to hear about that.
Keep going – I expect I’ll see the first sign of a genuine turning point in the Spanish market from what goes on here – so special thanks to Mark for persisting.
All the best for another six months or so!
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i am still lurking around reading and learning about the financial elements of the euro zone,i intend to buy but with so much uncertainty i will wait and see how it all pans out.last year i holidayed in rhodes in may and spent 3 weeks in spain in the summer,next year i am taking the kids to disney in florida in march/april but have not even thought about the summer yet i expect we will leave it till after the u.s trip then book up. All the while i shall be keeping an eye on the situation
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I no longer have an interest in buying in Spain but I read the forum occasionally to see what is happening. Give it 5 years or an almighty collapse of the euro and it could be worth buying but I won’t be one of the buyers. It was an amazing experience seeing people, who normally I would consider quite sensible, buying property in the belief that it would double in price in 5 years from already ridiculous levels.
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You summarise very well Mike, however spare a thought for many of those who reckoned their properties would double or more in 5years or even overnight, most would be thought of as ‘sensible’ too. It might seem easy to say it now, but the vast majority of them were literally duped by unscrupulous estate agents and developers who acted as if they were financial advisors. In the case of Brits buying, it was their fellow countrymen/women who deceived them, defrauded them of life savings and dignity.
Furthermore, these crooks also told their mug buyers that they themselves were also buying in this or that development and therefore it must be safe.
The majority of these crooks (they know who they are, and so do many of us know who they are) we could name them, escaped unpunished, with unpaid taxes, unpaid staff and the impotent, useless Spanish Government did nada about it.
Quite a lot of these crooks are now plying their fraud on new unsuspecting buyers in other countries. I hope to hear one day that some of their buyers have caught up with them and rid the world of their sort 👿
Like you though, even if the Euro plummets or disappears, even if Spanish property fell much further, I doubt I’d ever buy in Spain or any of these corrupt property markets again 😉
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There are other factors why people don’t want to buy….overbuilding (many new blocks you could shake hands with your neighbour). Sub-standard build and fittings, Some developments have serious problems and others are neglected and scruffy.
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