Spain Reduces Amount of Unsold Homes by 300,000

Spain Reduces Amount of Unsold Homes by 300,000

The Costa del Sol continues its recovery

While there are some areas of Spain that are having trouble attracting buyers, some areas of the country remain as popular as ever; such as the Costa del Sol. Around half of the unsold properties that were constructed before the crash of 2008 have now been sold according to the latest data from the Caixa Bank Group.

The analysis looked at the bulk of homes that were long thought to be unsellable due to their location, lack of infrastructure, and low demand. It showed that of the 650,000 properties that were on the market in 2009, only 388,000 were still unsold by the end of 2016.

This was representative of a drop of 20% in just one year, with similar results expected in 2017. Caixa are predicting that there will be less than 315,000 of these properties on the market by the end of 2017.

Some areas, such as Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol, are already running out of such unsellable properties. The areas that still have the most amount of these homes including La Rioja, Castille-La Mancha, and Valencia; the inland areas that don’t have as much demand.

To contrast this the problem doesn’t really exist in areas such as the Canaries and the Balearics, thanks in part to the popularity of the regions and the strict building controls.

The bank did further analysis that suggested property transactions would increase 12% in 2017; an increase on the 450,000 home sales recorded in 2016.

Caixa are also expecting that the average property price will increase 4.3% in 2017. Also on the increase is the number of foreign buyers, but it’s expected that British buyers will be a less dominant force with sales spread out between British, German, French and Scandinavian buyers.

It’s also expected the country, in particular Barcelona and the Costa del Sol, will see an increase in demand from Chinese, American and Russian investors.

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.