Posts written by Graham Hunt

It's a New Year and it's a new project. The Spanish Property Network is now up and running and building up to covering the whole of the country. As a result we have now made the Spanish Property Magazine free for this issue and maybe for the future too.

It took Apple a long time to approve this time, it seems that they don't rest on the eighth day though and finally Spanish Property Magazine issue 5 was approved and is now in the app store. This is the longest issue yet with an extra special on the Spanish Road Trip following on from this month's issue.

Andy, @RondaSpain, is walking from Rome to Ronda to raise money for ill children in Andalucia. His goal is to raise 2 million Euros in the next two years, the walk has an initial goal of 50,000 Euros, and he is currently passing through Valencia. How can you help?

I got a call at the end of last week from a client whose house for sale in Spain is really nice. Because of circumstances he needed to go back to Germany and he wanted to reduce the price on his house rather dramatically. So here it is a price reduction from 320K to 160K, and it wasn't massively overpriced at 320K either. So if you want a bargain house for sale in Valencia at 160k Euros with beautiful views

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.

Some clients came over a couple of weeks ago and they have bought a property in Spain that is perfect for them and should suit their purposes down to a T. After my blog post recently advising a client not to buy a property in Spain it was a relief to know that the clients in this case are not living in cloud cuckoo land and know exactly what they wanted out of their property for sale in Spain. Let's look at the facts.

We have written before about choosing a lawyer for your Valencia Property purchase and you can read the article at the link. Within that article we talked about how to choose your lawyer and the whole process of doing that. What we didn't talk about is what they do and this is important because you don't get to see it. All the work is done in the background and the only communication you may have with the lawyer is them telling you "It's Ok to pay the deposit now" and "Final date for the notary can be set now". We maybe should have called this article "What your Valencia Property lawyer ACTUALLY does" but we thought that maybe that was a bit on the nose as most people's impression is contained in the picture below.

The minister for the economy in Spain, Luis de Guindos, has caused a flutter in the market by insisting that banks need to provision more money and drop the prices on their repossessed properties to clear the stock. You will know what I think of most bank owned properties if you have read this post on their underhand tactics to gain clients with property at unrealistic prices but decent financing terms. However, the unintended (Or maybe even intended if I were to be a bit Machiavellian) consequence of his words has been that many properties on the market have been reduced in price this week.

In April I wrote this article about Valencia's Property Taxes. I thought you might like an update to the story as over the last few days I have been corresponding with three different potential Valencia Property buyers who are worried about their potential tax liability (they haven't come through my company but they found the article and contacted for clarifications) We are now five months further down the line from the original post and the situation is a little clearer (Translation: It is still a mess).

When you purchase a property in Spain you have to pay tax on the purchase, currently in Valencia for new and used properties the tax is 10%, in fact it is 10% on new property all around the country. In Madrid for example the cost on used property is currently 6% having been reduced at the start of the year. The cost in other areas varies from 7-10%. However you may be in for a nasty surprise unless you take certain precautions when finding yourself a bargain. Let's look at an example.

Last Saturday I took some clients out to see a lot of Spanish properties again. That's what I do of course. This time the issue was the purchase of a Spanish Property in Valencia for a client moving to Spain to work at the Ford factory. (Don't be surprised Ford have announced a huge new investment in the Valencia plant to build the new Ford Kuga (Or Cougar))

We love living in Valencia and we want you to love it too. At the moment though events have overtaken us and we cannot even offer to take you to look at properties you may like here and we don't even know how long the situation will last and cannot yet begin to imagine how it will affect the country of Spain, the Continent of Europe and the whole World over the next few months and years.

I really wanted to call this article "The Valencia Property Market now... After erm... That". But then realised that the "THAT" in the title could refer to two things and be confusing for the majority of our readers and that the word "erm" in a title isn't great. So yes, we are referring to the flooding and at the same time of course, the death of hope and loss of sanity in the States and we are looking at what both mean for the Valencia Property market. We took a week and a half out of posting on social media, of promoting good properties and generally of being happy out of respect for the people who lost their lives or their possessions or everything in the floods and for those facing up to losing their rights in the States, but for those who can, life goes on and for others putting together a life that works now is a priority.