Is Prince’s Unsold Villa in Marbella A Sign of the Times for Homebuyer Tastes?

Is Prince’s Unsold Villa in Marbella A Sign of the Times for Homebuyer Tastes?

Prince, who sadly left us earlier this month from currently unknown causes, was famous for a lot of things. Obviously he was a famous musician, but he was also famous for his flamboyance, his short stature, his love of purple, and for the people of southern Spain he’s famous for the “Prince Villa”.

Back on the market Princes former Villa is back in the headlines  

The Prince Villa can be found in El Paraiso, just west of Marbella, and is valued at €5.25 million. It’s been on the market for years now, even before Prince passed away. He bought the home in 1998 and it was a gift for his wife at the time. He put it on the market in 2006 and it’s been on there ever since.

Bloomberg recently published an article in which they tried to determine why the villa, which manages to be glam, garish and glitzy all at once, is unsellable.

The owner of a local nightclub, Olivia Valere, says that the house is glamorous and luxurious but it’s so flashy it’s become outdated. There’s a lot of truth to that too. Marbella property has always been the height of fashion and tastes. These days homes need to have an understated elegance and so something as flashy as the Prince Villa is easily too brash for its own good.

The property is also valued too high for most people in the region at over €5 million. Now that Prince has passed there is a higher chance that someone will want to buy the home that has been described as the inspiration for some of his later work though.

The property market of the Costa del Sol is doing pretty well and should do even if Prince’s old home isn’t sold though. It currently takes an average of 10.5 months for a Spanish property to sell according to date from Tinsa. The average in Marbella and the Costa del Sol comes down to 9.1 months though and the prices of homes in the region are set to rise by up to 4.3% in 2016.