You don't just arrive in Valencia by accident when you are born in Widnes. It takes time, application and at least a bit of planning. It was a conscious decision based on education, life circumstances, family and hundreds of other factors meaning that moving here made sense. The lovely thing is that the majority of Valencia Property clients have now come to the same conclusion, they are not looking to buy in Valencia by accident, it's a conscious choice and more often than not a lifestyle choice.

Every month, every week and every day the number of properties available to buy or rent in Valencia and elsewhere drops. In the last three years supply of properties for sale has dropped by 70% and the speed with which properties sell has also dropped, some never even get advertised. This creates a dilemma for buyers, less choice and having to make very quick decisions. It also creates a perfect market for sellers to be, let's say, awkward. Therefore you need to be ready to get your offer in and have the ability to buy and today we are going to go over what you need to do in order to be ready, working hand in hand with us at Valencia Property, because as Bob Dylan famously said "The times they are a changing" and he has never been more right than he is now.

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.

Or ten ways for getting the best value possible when buying Spanish Property. When you are going to be buying Spanish property you obviously want to get the best value for money. However that does not only mean finding a property and negotiating a price that suits you and then sitting back and congratulating yourself on a job well done. There are so many other ways to save money on your purchase that if you do not do them then your costs for the purchase could be thousands of Euros higher than they otherwise would be. Take a look at ten of the ways in which you can save money when buying your Spanish property.

Well then, Apple has brought out a new iPad. It's a little smaller and a lot lighter so you can read it in bed and when you fall asleep and drop it on your nose it won't get broken. (Your nose that is, although your iPad may slide off the bed and crash in pieces on the tiled floor if you aren't careful)

Oops!! Sometimes I forget things just like anyone else. Well I made a newsletter a couple of weeks ago and sent it out to all of my subscribers but then totally forgot to send it out to everyone else on the blog (Do you see how it pays to be a subscriber to our newsletter? sign up at the top of the page)

After a hiatus we are back with our summer special. Some actual positive news out of Spain and a few stories you may have missed under the radar because it seems that only bad news sells. So Spain is Different 20 can be seen here with stories including: 1) If Not France, Why Not Spain? 2) A Tourist Visit To Aragón 3) The A-Z of Seville

Valencia is a great city with so much to offer that many people decide it has to be Valencia and nothing outside will work for them. Some of those people drill down to a certain area of Valencia and we have even got a client at the moment who wants a particular street. Of course we say that Valencia is great all the time in this blog, you can check back if you want, but we also appreciate areas outside Valencia.

When you are looking at properties in Valencia or Spain in general you get to see some weird things, things that you are not used to. Sometimes this might well put someone off a property or even attract them to it more. Today, therefore, a bit more preparation for you, we present some of the things you might find in a Valencia Property whether typical, strange or just expected.

Almost two years ago in June 2009 I wrote a post that was featured on This is Spain about Twitter users in Spain. It is interesting to see what has happened in the meantime to those featured back then. Many of the users from then now no longer use the service or have moved on into different accounts. Many continue using Twitter strongly, including the number one and two on the list below ;-).

Last week we talked about the places we thought that were worth looking at (And also Oropesa) to the North of Valencia. Today we go down the coast from Valencia towards and into Alicante to show you places you should be investigating if you are interested in living near the best beaches in Valencia. As we mentioned last week the majority of our clients want to live in or around Valencia but that doesn't mean if you want to live elsewhere we cannot give you the best service possible. Our tentacles reach out both up and down the coast despite our focus being the city of Valencia itself and the areas around it.

Despite the majority of our clients looking to live in Valencia City or in Inland Valencia towns where you can get a great lifestyle (Yes, we have a post about that which many people think is one of the best guides to the towns around Valencia city) we also get requests for properties with "sea views" or their location being right near the sea. In Valencia City that means you are limited to a few roads in the Cabanyal, Malvarrosa and the Patacona areas with a shout out to El Saler to the South of the city on the Albufera lake. In El Saler, if you are lucky, you'll get sea views to one side and lake views to the other, but apart from that there's not much availability of close up sea views. Valencia is flat after all so you may be just a few streets away from the sea but if the building behind you is just as high as yours then your sea view is blocked.

In the immortal words of Joe Gormley, ex Union Leader in the strife ridden UK of the 1970's ;-) you should always be ready to negotiate when you are thinking of buying a house for sale in Spain. (He didn't actually mention houses for sale in Spain but you get what I mean) Prices are generally flexible on most properties but remember that sometimes you have to do that negotiation with a bank because the owner owes as much as they are asking for the property. Even, and possibly especially, bank repossessions are negotiable because the banks have been told by the Spanish central bank to get rid of some of their outstanding stock.