SUMMARY/CONCLUSION:
After our reccy trip to Spain, we’ve come to the conclusion that we won’t be buying ‘Our Own Place in the Sun’ anytime soon in Spain.
PRE-VISIT BACKGROUND
Our idea of purchasing a second/holiday home for avoiding the British winter/renting out in the summer (also, possibly using as a permanernt future home) had become less attractive soon before our visit. This was because of the drop in the value of the UK pound against the Euro, meaning that we’d have to pay more for a property.
COSTS
1.The additional costs of buying a property in Spain can add 10% to the purchase price. With a purchase price of £120,000 that’s an extra £12,000 to find. I’m not sure that property in Spain will appreciate in value in the near future to cover this – in fact prices are currently stagnant and/or falling.
2.Annual property taxes amount to 1 -2 % of the property’s value. If you then add on maintainence costs to a property worth say £120,000 you are looking at least another £2000 a year. If you were travelling to a second/holiday home you’d have to pay for flights on top of this and for electricity during your stay, provide and clean your sheets and towels. Whereas I reckon we could have two quality off peak holidays a year for around £2000.
LOCATION, LOCATION AND LOCATION
We covered 2,000 kilometres (well over 1,000 miles) fom Valencia to Torremolinos over 9 days. Sometimes we had to drive through some towns/villages when unable to avoid them because of the road system, and, when possible, bypassed them if they looked very heavily built up when approaching. Although we did visit some lovely inland locations (e.g. Rhonda), our search concentrated mainly on coastal areas.
We found that the majority of seaside locations right down our search area were extremely heavily built up, even more so than we expected, with some seaside places even featuring skyscrapers (e.g. see a view of Benidorm from the very fast, very busy road, below). Not exactly our idea of a quiet place to relax!
Benidorm
There were some notable exceptions, particularly in the La Manga area immediately East of Cartagena where the lay of the land forms a type of enormous sea-lake with a small exit to the sea. There the Spaniards have built (and occupied!) before the holiday home boom and the villas, gardens and general area are well designed and attractive (albeit more expensive).
Cartagena by chris fries
Another very attractive area was the Cabo Gato national park, east of Almeria, with some beautiful urbanizations in difficult to access seaside locations (e.g. Los Esculios below). In general, the more inaccessible/less ’sandy beach’ areas around Cartagena and as far west as Almeria were the least disturbed by runaway development.
Los Esculios, 1st stop at the Cabo de Gato National Park, east of Almeria
PROPERTY TYPES AND ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION
Most of the property marketed in Spain as second/holiday/retirement homes is situated in urbanications, large housing estates, many of which are located on the periphery of towns, next to busy roads or in the middle of nowhere. Anything nice in a better, quieter location, close to the sea was way above our £120k budget.
The popular “Buy a Place in the Sun’ genre of TV programmes tend to concentrate mostly on the property itself, with not too many shots of all the surrounding properties on the urbanication.
When we were siting on the balcony of one apartment there was the noise of the neighbours heating fan and we tried to imagine what it would be like in Summer when everyone had on the air conditioning.
Buensol Apartments, Torremolinos
The final straw was one night in our holiday apartment when were trying to get to sleep and it was impossible between our Spanish neighbours chatting loudly (through paper thin walls) and the incessant whir of their heating fan. We were longing to be back in our quiet bed at home.
OTHER COSTS
We found Spain to be more expensive than the UK for buying food, even in discount supermarkets like Lidl. Eating out was a similar price to the UK but slightly cheaper if you drank alcohol.
FEBRUARY WERATHER
It was dry every day and up to 19 degrees Celsius on a couple of days. However there was a prevalent nasty cold wind which often meant that one side of you was hot and the other cold, very unpleasant. It was prety cool overnight at around 3 degrees. So although it was warmer than the UK I found it hard to maintain a comfortable temperature.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
RENTING PROPERTY OUT WHEN NOT IN USE
This might be very difficult, as there is incredible competition. It’s possible for a holiday maker to rent a one bedroom apartment through an online bed bank for as litle as £15 a night. If you were renting out your own second/holiday home and paying letting agent fees, paying for cleaning between lets etc on top of a low rent would leave you with virtually no profit.
OVERALL CONCLUSION
If you are presently (March 2009) looking for a place in Spain for winter sun, you’d most probably be much better off NOT BUYING but renting instead. You can get excellent value due to the huge choice of people renting out properties in a variety of locations with minimum financial commitment and not tying up capital or taking on an expensive mortgage.
Although prices for the least desirable properties might have fallen substantially recently and are still falling, it is still not good overall value to buy until BOTH property values have dropped much further AND the pound/euro ratio improved substantially.
I’d therefore only recommend that you buy a holiday or second home in Spain if you can easily afford a second property and are able to overcome such adversities in the short term. It may be possible however to find a desirable area and strike a good deal, and so do well in the future, but do your own thorough research first!
As for us, we are satisfied to have come to a firm (even if negative) conclusion. Although we are not exactly holding our breath, we might re-visit this issue sometime in the future.
The Our Own Place in the Sun story
(1)The idea
(2)Where in southern Spain?
(3)Planning the reccy to southern Spain
(4) Why we won’t be buying a property in Spain
