When you are looking to buy a property in Valencia at the cheaper end of the market you might find that your choice is a bit restricted as prices have risen considerably in the last few years. We have talked in the past in these pages about how it's difficult to find anything with basic requirements in the city for under 150k and maybe even 180k, especially if it's relatively central. It has now become even more difficult because of a new law that came out in July of which we are just starting to see the results. If you are not aware of what a VPO property is then you need to read on.

In other countries when you say you live in the suburbs there is an immediate impression of a sense of something very different from city life. In the UK it's all to do with middle class aspiration and keeping up with the Joneses, curtain twitching, needing the car for everything but most especially for getting to the golf club and an impending sense of quiet boredom and doom stretching from mid life into your dotage. In the USA it's white picket fences, needing the car for everything but needing to travel much further, overbearing home owners associations, every house identical and a longing to return to main street USA where everything was to hand before the 'Burbs existed. In Spain the suburbs are different because the concept of the commute was alien to Spanish life until quite recently and most of them weren't built by a developer to a template.

In these pages we have talked before about the, let's say, quirky nature of property owners in Valencia and Spain as a whole but until today we haven't had to talk about the threat of our next consultation call being from behind bars. So today we are going to talk about an ultra quirky owner and why you might have a zoom call or whatsapp conversation with me from Carabanchel (Spain's equivalent of Alcatraz, Wormwood Scrubs or the Salt Mines of Siberia.) Strangeways Here We Come In order to work with our clients, buyers, we sometimes have to work with these quirky owners. You can see some of our other articles about owners and what we put up with in the related posts below, just click on the images. Sometimes though quirky becomes absolutely hatstand crazy and that is what has happened this week.

We have now fully launched our new project Stepping Stone Rentals where we offer three month rentals for people coming into Valencia as a first step before finding their long term rental, purchase or even as a Schengen Stopover for Digital Nomads. We have written about the new company before here and will continue to mention how it's going in this blog as we move forward. We may also incorporate the rentals into the Valencia Property homepage in the near future. However there is one thing we need to satisfy the demand we are seeing and that is more properties.

What if I told you that you can maybe have it all? What if I told you that something else is possible? That you could live in or near a great city without feeling overwhelmed where people still put their own family and leisure time first and you don't have to stay in the office to impress the boss on pain of losing your job and your health insurance. What if I just talked to you about living in Spain and more precisely, living in Valencia? And finally what if I told you that everyone can have it? I'd be talking total rubbish of course. A simple move to live in another place is not going to perform miracles for anyone, never mind everyone. However, another life is possible and Valencia is one of those places where your work life balance just may become much more manageable.

Let's not make any bones about it but townhouses are an enigma. Here at Valencia Property we love them. They offer loads of space, great locations, plenty of potential and community (Being in a town and surrounded by others) and they are usually great value when you look at the price per square metre. However, they often require a lot of modernisation, and the bigger they are the more that modernisation will cost, they need more upkeep than an apartment and they usually don't have the kerb appeal as what lies behind that townhouse door is often very well disguised.

There's so much to write about this week that it's difficult to know where to start. Should we go with the weather and the hottest ever temperature in Valencia? Should we start with the Instagram interview we did last week? The new websites and projects? The official launch of Stepping Stone Rentals and the first reserves made? The agreed sales? New listings? ... There's so much. But first it's still holiday time isn't it...?

As a seller of property in Valencia for whatever reason you are selling, Valencia Property is the best solution you can use to sell on the international market. Established for well over 20 years, Valencia Property is best known as a buyers' agent working for international buyers from all over the World who want to buy in Valencia. As the number one result for many terms to do with property in Valencia on most search engines and the only agency to have a Podcast, a Youtube Channel, a hugely informative blog that is updated regularly (You're reading it now) as well as our homepage with our property listings we have a large throughput of clients finding us from everywhere and every direction.

The numbers of American clients that pass through our virtual doors at Valencia Property continues to grow. Year on year and quarter by quarter we continue to see greater numbers of Americans looking to buy real estate in Valencia either to settle here or to have a holiday home leading up to retirement when they intend to settle permanently. We are often asked why this is and we constantly see posts online asking those who have already made the move whether it was worth it. The answers are almost 100% positive by those who have moved. So today on the blog we thought we would look at why Americans specifically are attracted to Valencia and, by extension, Spain.

Sometimes we get a bit blase about living in Valencia. We talk about the year round enviable climate, the ease of living, its compactness meaning it has the advantages of big city living but the feel of a much smaller metropolis and the fact that Valencia, once the hidden jewel of the Mediterranean, has now been found by the international press and is most definitely on the circuit for lifestyle bloggers and digital nomads. Voted recently as the best place to live in the World, twice, Valencia has a lot to offer you in terms of lifestyle and value for money whether that money is in Dollars, Pounds, Euros or even Czech Crowns.

As an add-on to last week's post about our network people have been asking what our day looks like as estate agents in Valencia. What do we actually do all day. Now a couple of months ago I put up a little video short showing a bit of this, you can see it below, but today I thought it was time to show a bit of background of what we do on a daily basis to make sure we give the best possible service of any estate agency in Spain or potentially the World. I actually wrote an article like this in 2011 on this blog but I thought an update was due because things have changed.

Once again on arriving at the half way point of the year we are on target for a record number of sales this year with a large throughput of clients and also so many in the pipeline that summer is looking difficult holiday wise. However, recently we have been getting a load of calls along the lines of... "We are buying a property through another agent but we could do with some advice" "We have already bought a place but have just found your blog and we need some help" So today here is the Valencia Propery network which we put in place for our own clients.

Unfortunately in the last week we have had to say goodbye to a couple of clients, allowing them to continue their Valencia Property journey without our assistance. There are a litany of reasons why and in today's post we will go into why you may sabotage your own purchase even if you really want the property. Bear in mind that these clients may have made one, various, many or even all of the following faux pas in the last few weeks before we decided to cut them loose. You may even want to play a game of guessing how many of the following mistakes one particular client made before we decided to stop working with them.

Last week we produced the first part of our "Ultimate AI Guide to Buying Property in Valencia" based on all of the information in this blog and this blog alone. Today of course we will be publishing the second part of that guide as promised. However there is also other stuff going on in Valencia Property land and some excellent new properties coming onto the site so it's time to start reading and enjoying the images. We also feature some of the new properties on the Valencia Property homepage and also look at what's happening as we move into the summer including news of our summer holiday dates and when you shouldn't be planning to come over here.

Here at Valencia Property we are proud to produce all of our own content, no guest blogs that have nothing to do with the subject of these pages, no sponsored posts, lots of information in long form blog posts to keep you up to date with all of the market moves and a little bit of humour thrown in for good measure. Today we are changing the format a bit though because I got lazy... Well, when I say I got lazy, for four years now I have been promising myself I'd write the Ultimate Guide to buying property and living in Valencia. And I have been putting it off because it was a big project and every week we put out a long form blog post and also for the last four years we have been a tad busy. Even during lockdown I managed to find excuses not to do it.

At the back end of October last year we wrote about the rental crisis in Valencia and what it meant for buyers, tenants and us as a business moving forward. Last week on the podcast we updated you on what has been happening since and today here we are going into a bit more details on that and connecting that to the progress we are making in the background of the new Stepping Stone Rentals website and project in order to help alleviate some of those problems. Firstly though, just to let you know one thing, Valencia Property continues to be hugely busy while at the same time starting up a new business, website and finding new employees from scratch. We have just had a week with the most property enquiries seen for about six months. And we haven't had a huge slowdown in the intervening period either, it's just that in December demand was off the scale

Last week we announced our new project "Stepping Stone Rentals". The interest from both owners of properties and tenants has been off the scale since. We have already identified or been given a lot of properties to be used for the project and we already have people wanting to start their three month rentals as soon as the 1st of July! (We need to get a move on) We have also had a lot of interest from people wanting to buy a property to include in the project. So today we are going to look at the process of buying your Stepping Stone Rentals property and then we will look at getting it ready for medium term tenants which is useful for those of you already with a property.

One of the things we love about working in the Valencia Property market is that our job is never the same from one day to the next. We get a wide variety of clients from all over the World looking at a wide range of prices and a vast array of different styles of property. This means that every day is different as we have discussed on the podcast which you can hear here. The thing that drew me towards writing about this was when I looked at the homepage the other day and the properties we had there and then compared that to a UK based site as I am currently helping my dad to sell his property in the UK and to search for another one. Sometimes you can get absolutely sick and tired of looking at bricks and there is nothing else apart from bricks and mortar in the UK market. How can you write something interesting about something that has few redeeming features? I guess thtis is why property descriptions in the UK are so bland and vanilla.