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Unfinished Development in Estepona Goes Up for Auction 2

SpainHouses.netFebruary 10, 2014February 10, 20142 Comments

It is now several years since the property bubble burst and it has taken several other sectors with it, resulting in situations that would have been unthinkable years ago. One of these is the Golf Hills Village development which is only 95 per cent completed, but which has now been put to auction. It is the first time in Spain that this has occurred with an unfinished development, but the situation is not as exceptional as it may seem. Since the year 2000 BNP Paribas Real Estate, which is handling the transaction, has carried out 148 auctions involving 11,800 properties and a figure of more than 500 million euros. The auction will have a reserve price of 7.3 million euros and those interested will have to make sealed bids for amounts higher than this in front of a notary. The bids will be opened on March 18th and the highest bidder will be able to take over the apartments and sell them on, or make whatever use of them they may wish.

The owner of the development is the Midamarta company, which is part of Caja Castilla la Mancha. This company began to acquire properties from the bank but they were transferred to the Fondo de Garantía de Depósitos de Entidades de Crédito (FGC) after the Bank of Spain intervened in the savings bank, towards the cost of the 1,300 million euros that had been used to save it.
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Balearics Property Market Grow Thanks to Foreign Buyers

SpainHouses.netFebruary 3, 2014Leave a comment

British expats, as well as German and Russian buyers, are helping Spain's property market out of the doldrums, with a lot of interest in luxury developments in Majorca.

Spain's property market is showing more green shoots of recovery, with the country's House Price Index reporting the smallest decline in prices since the end of 2010, according to the National Institute of Statistics.

House prices still fell overall - but Majorca bucks the trend, reporting property price rises of 4.8 per cent in the third quarter of last year, compared with the same period of 2012, according to the Spanish development ministry.

Three other regions reported prices rises in the House Price Index - Navarra, with growth of 2.8 per cent, Extremadura, up 2.2 per cent and Madrid, up 0.3 per cent. However, these figures fall far short of Majorca's growth, which estate agents say is boosted by foreign buyers, particularly those with a substantial sum to spend.
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Andalucía’s Anti-eviction Law Suspended by Court 1

SpainHouses.netJanuary 27, 2014January 27, 20141 Comment

Spain’s Constitutional Court has suspended - provisionally - the law passed by the Junta de Andalucía in October to prevent families with limited financial resources being evicted from their homes.

The law, described as a measure to ensure the social function of a property, allowed the authority to temporarily expropriate the use of a property repossessed by a bank so that its original owners could still live in it.

The Constitutional Court has admitted the central government appeal against the law designed by the Junta de Andalucía to ease home evictions by temporarily expropriating the use of houses seized by banks and allowing their owners to continue living in them.

The Andalusian law was passed on October 1st and revoked a previous decree on the same matter which had been passed in April and was also the subject of an appeal on grounds of it being unconstitutional.
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Bad news for home sales in Spain, despite the fall in prices 1

SpainHouses.netJanuary 20, 20141 Comment

Just a day after Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said that the housing market was beginning to touch bottom in a recovery that is gathering pace, the National Statistics Institute (INE) on Tuesday announced that home sales plunged in November of last year to their second-lowest level since the crisis began around the start of 2008.

The INE said housing transactions in the month shrank by 15.7 percent to 21,847, a figure only above that of April 2012, which coincided with that year’s Easter holidays and therefore had fewer working days.

Despite an accumulated fall in prices since the highs set in 2007 of around 40 percent after a decade-long boom that suddenly burst, house sales have fallen for the last seven straight months. In the first 11 months of last year, home sales dropped 2.1 percent.

Demand is being restrained by a jobless rate of just under 26 percent and by falling wages as Spain strives to restore its competitiveness and export its way out of the crisis. Banks have also tightened lending conditions.
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The debate is over: no skyscrapers in Marbella (Málaga) 2

SpainHouses.netJanuary 13, 2014January 13, 20142 Comments

Ángeles Muñoz, Mayor of Marbella, has announced that the controversial plans to build skyscrapers in the town will not go ahead, and the debate about them is over. She did not say whether the modification of the town plan which was recently approved as a first step towards building the tower blocks would be debated again by the council with a view to annulling it.

Backtracking on her previous statement to the effect that no decision would be made until a public board had been convened and consulted, and in the face of strong opposition, the mayor said that it would not be necessary to wait for January and the advice of the yet-to-be-created board, because the decision had been taken.

In the mayor’s opinion, this means an end to the debate about the project for skyscrapers. Asked about the creation in Marbella of a citizen platform made up of promoters, architects and ecologists who are opposed to the project, she said:

“Anybody can form a group and debate. If a platform is set up we will be delighted to hear its opinions, but on the part of the local government I am telling you there is no intention to go ahead,” (in reference to the skyscrapers).
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Las Vegas Sands Drops Madrid Resort Plans

SpainHouses.netJanuary 6, 2014December 30, 2013Leave a comment

Las Vegas Sands Corp. is no longer pursuing plans to invest more than $30 billion to develop a series of integrated resorts in Madrid, Spain.

"While the government and many others have worked diligently on this effort, we do not see a path in which the criteria needed to move forward with this large-scale development can be reached," Las Vegas Sands chairman and chief executive Sheldon G. Adelson, said in a company statement. "As a result we will no longer be pursuing this opportunity."

The Spanish government rejected a series of conditions LVS had placed in order to continue with the Europa Vegas project because they were incompatible with European Union law, Spain's deputy prime minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, told The Wall Street Journal.

Conditions included government investment guarantees and for a compensation deal to cover any losses related to changes to Spanish laws in the future, WSJ reports.
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There Will Be No Skyscrapers in Marbella Without Consensus

SpainHouses.netDecember 30, 2013December 26, 2013Leave a comment

The town planning debate which has raged recently over plans for a 30 storey residential block took a new turn when Mayor Ángeles Muñoz announced that they will only go ahead if there is a general consensus - which at the moment is not looking likely.

The final decision will not be taken by the council, but by a board, the ‘Consejo Social de la Ciudad’ with members drawn from local and social organisations, professional bodies and other groups. This board, which is an entity which can be set up in large towns, does not yet exist in Marbella but will be constituted in January.

The mayor emphasized that legally, it is the Town Hall’s prerogative to take the decision, but it will abide by the recommendation of the board.

The modification to the Urban Plan to allow tower blocks to be built in five areas of the municipality of Marbella, at up to 150 metres above sea level received initial approval at the last council meeting.
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Spanish Property Market: House Prices Rise on Quarterly Basis

SpainHouses.netDecember 23, 2013December 20, 2013Leave a comment

House prices in Spain rose on a quarterly basis for the first time since the middle of 2010 in the third quarter of this year, but experts were quick to point out that this does not mean that the housing market has started to emerge from trough it plunged into around the start of 2008.

According to figures released by the National Statistics Institute (INE), house prices climbed 0.7 percent in the period July-September from the previous three months.

Prices on average have fallen over 40 percent from their highs around the end of 2007 after more than doubling over the course of a decade-long boom that turned to bust.

The INE said that home sales in October declined 10 percent from the same month a year earlier to 22,770, the lowest figure since March and one of the lowest since the real estate bubble burst.

Although the economy emerged from an extended recession in the third quarter of this year, a jobless rate of 26 percent remains a major impediment to a recovery in the housing market, which still has an estimated glut of some 600,000 housing units. Banks have also tightened up on lending, citing a lack of “solvent demand.”

Would-be home buyers are finding it hard to secure the necessary funding at current prices and seven out of 10 transactions taking place are in cash.
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The Construction of a Skyscraper in Marbella, Malaga (Costa del Sol)

SpainHouses.netDecember 16, 2013Leave a comment

Since Marbella Town Hall approved modifications to local planning restrictions to allow the construction of skyscrapers in the municipality, so far only one project has been put forward. The plans envisage a 30-storey residential block reaching 115 metres above sea level on the Istán road. The high rise block would be designed by Catalán architect Ricardo Bofill, thanks to negotiations with the developers that are in their final stages.

While several investment groups from Spain and further afield have shown an interest, this is the only definite project that has reached the local planning offices.

The site for the block would be near the Istán road, just over a kilometre from the coast, and not far from the Olivia Valere night club, Les Roches hotel management school and Manolo Santana’s tennis club. The project is for a solely residential building with a maximum of four luxury flats per floor.
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Construction Industry Shows Signs of Recovery in Malaga Province

SpainHouses.netDecember 10, 2013Leave a comment

The construction industry is beginning to show signs of life again, thanks to the high-end property sector, which so far this year has experienced a growth which is even greater than that achieved in 2012.

According to figures from the DOM3 association, which encompasses 23 companies related to the construction of this type of property, 60 houses costing more than one million euros were built in 2011 in the triangle formed by Marbella, Estepona and Benahavís, with a global investment of 250 million euros, while 2012 ended with 75 houses built and 300 million euros invested. That was a 20 per cent increase in the number of properties, but this year, growth in this sector is even higher.

The president of the association, Sofía Polo, attributes this growth above all to flourishing foreign markets and greater confidence in the Spanish economy from those who are considering investing in this country. Another factor that permits this sector to perform better lies in the easy access to credit for this segment of the market and the fact that a high percentage of buyers do not need bank financing.
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