Top Tips for Moving Abroad, Five Property Selling Myths, Plus More

Welcome to the June edition of the Marena Murray newsletter.

This month, we share our top tips for preparing for your move abroad, we reveal how much it would cost to modernise a property, we debunk five property selling myths and we investigate the cause behind a significant increase in demand for property in Spain.

Top Tips for Moving Abroad

If you, like countless thousands before you, have fallen in love with the country of Spain, you might find yourself thinking about making your holiday permanent. Moving to a new country can be a daunting task, but don’t worry! We have some top tips for what to consider when moving abroad.

Do As Much Research as Possible
The first thing you should do, is some research. There are hundreds of ex-pat forums and articles (like this one!) with advice on where to start. Make sure you do some research on local laws and customs. For example, did you know that areas of urban Spain have daily bin collections, with the whole street sharing one communal bin?

Don’t Rush into Buying Abroad
Just because you fell in love with the area on holiday, doesn’t mean it’s the perfect home. You should consider visiting the area several times and maybe even think about renting first.

Integrate Into Your New Community
Putting some time and effort into learning how to speak the language fluently will be a big step in ensuring that you comfortably integrate yourself into your new home. Those who learn to speak the language will find it easier to perform every day tasks like visiting the shops or the doctors. It will also mean you can find employment and make new friends in the country.

Take Your Health into Account
If you are registered to work in Spain and make contributions to their national insurance, you will be entitled to healthcare. It might be a good idea to purchase health insurance until you are sure you are successfully registered in the country.

Speak to an Independent Advisor
You should definitely confirm everything you have learned with an independent legal adviser. Make sure you aren’t doing anything illegal by leaving the country, insure all your affairs are in order and discuss the legal processes involved in moving to a new country.

Tell the Government You’re Leaving
Ensure you have informed the relevant agencies that you are leaving the country. Social Security Office, HM Revenue and Customs, Department of Work and Pensions, and your GP must all be informed of the fact that you’re leaving the country.

Talk to Marena Murray
With over 25 years of experience in Spanish property, and as the leading estate agent on La Manga Club, we are well placed to assist you in making the jump from the UK to your new home in Spain. Our expert team are on hand to help now.

How Much Does it Cost to Modernise a Property

It is easy to see why renovating property in Spain is an attractive prospect. Whilst the UK might have many new build housing estates springing up across the country, Spain has a limited amount of new builds available.

It makes sense to take advantage of some of the older villas. You’ll find them in attractive locations across Spain, and due to several of them being more than half a century old, they’ll be in need of renovation. This provides you with an opportunity to inject some modern conveniences into your new home, whilst also finding a cheap deal on a rundown property in need of TLC.

What Kind of Services Are There?

To live a comfortable standard of modern life, it could be argued you require electricity, water and way to dispose of sewage, at the very least

The vast majority of urban homes will come with these things as a standard. Make sure you confirm that the property has them and if they do not, find out how much it would cost to have them set up.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Spain is five times bigger than the UK. If you are thinking of renovating an older villa, and it’s in a remote area, it might not be practical to have these services installed. So what can you do? 

 

Go Off the Grid

The joys of modern technology now means you can harness the power of the wind and sun to generate electricity, collect rainwater and recycle it for everyday usage and install various means for removing sewage.

 

An older villa will have been designed to handle the seasonal weather, meaning you won't need to worry too much about finding modern means to fight the heat and cold. There are also a range of off grid sewage systems which can be installed.

The average solar panel costs €6800 (&6000) to install. To be off grid will cost more as you will need a powerful battery and a diesel powered backup generator. A means of disposing of sewage, like a septic tank will cost an average of €8500 (&7490) to install. Underground rain tanks cast cost as little as €227 (&200) for a 20 litre tank, but can skyrocket to €10226 (&9000) for a 39000 litre tank. At the end of the day it depends on your needs. Water tanks can either be filled with rainwater, or there are services in Spain where people can come to refill your tanks.

Other modern conveniences like phone lines and the internet have been made easier to access. Urban Spain enjoys fibre optic connections, whilst European Union funded innovations have made the internet readily available in even the most rural areas of Spain.

It is important that you speak to an expert contractor on the subject of modernising an older home. They will be able to advise on the costs involved, whether it’s structurally possible to carry out the work and they’ll be able to carry out all the work themselves. There are also several grants available if you choose a government approved contractor, so make sure you do your research!

Five Property Selling Myths

 If you’ve recently decided to sell your home, then you’ve probably been researching all sorts of information and asking for plenty of advice from family and friends on how to get it all wrapped up smoothly and quickly. While there are plenty of great tips out there on how to maximise the appeal of your home, there are also a few myths that seem to be passed around from time to time.

Luckily for you we’re here to fill you in on some of the selling tips that may not be 100% true or just wrong all together. So here are our top 5 property selling myths busted.

You get out what you put in
A property purchase is an investment, but that doesn’t mean you need to sink every penny of your income into it. Upgrading or renovating areas of your home - in most cases - increase the value of your home. However, renovations are not sure fire profit. Just because you put &3,000 into doing up your kitchen, it doesn’t mean you’ve added &7-10,000 to the value of your home. Also, if your taste in design is somewhat ‘unique’ then there may be a chance that you’ve turned one room from a generic blank slate, into a buyer’s worst nightmare. The key to putting money into your home is to focus on function and not fashion. Install any missing modern home features, but don’t burn through cash trying to wow potential buyers with your design skills.

You should always aim high
This one isn’t necessarily specific to the property market, but it’s a fairly mainstream belief that whenever you’re negotiating you start high and let them try and work you down to something more realistic. While this may be a good tactic in some situations, when selling a home, you have to keep in mind just how competitive the market actually is. When buyers search for a home they are most likely to look for properties priced below their maximum budget and try and bring the price down further, if your home is priced unnecessarily high, then it won’t even show up on some buyers' radar and you’ll be harming your chances of booking viewings.

Timing is everything
This is one of those half true tips. It is true that Spring is a good time to put your home on the market, the market is busier that time of year and there are smaller benefits such as the return of nice weather that improves the look of any home. But just because Spring is a good time to be on the market, this doesn’t mean that the rest of the year is a poor time to sell. Realistically, people are looking at homes throughout the year and there are plenty of factors that contribute to someone’s decision to move home. There is a chance you may receive more interest during the warmer months of the year, but if someone is willing to make an offer that’s right for you at another time, then there’s no point in delaying a move 3-6 months.

It’s the interior that really matters
This is another half-truth, the interior of your home is obviously quite important when trying to sell your home. However, the exterior also plays a large role. The exterior is your homes first impression, so don’t just assume that every buyer is going to take the ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ approach to property. This doesn’t mean that you need to go all out by laying a new driveway and installing water features, but making sure the front garden is kept in good shape and doors or windows have a fresh coat of paint can go a long way in getting people in the door in the first place.

Buyers love a fixer upper because they’re such a bargain
Although this may seem a bit of a contradiction to our earlier point, when you’re planning to sell your home, it’s important that you invest the right amount of money to help get it off the market. All buyers love a bargain and in today’s DIY world some buyers will consider a fixer upper but that is entirely dependent on what they actually need to fix. There’s a big difference between putting up a few extra shelves and repairing some faulty plumbing. You might get lucky and find a buyer that doesn’t mind getting stuck into all of it, but the longer your list of repairs is, the shorter your list of potential buyers will be. 

Significant Increases in Demand for Property in Spain

 The number of non-Spanish buyers purchasing property in Spain has experienced a sharp increase according to the latest figures from the Spanish Land Registrars Association.

According to the Land Register, the number of residential property sales involving a foreign buyer in Q1 was around 14,870, up 15.6% when compared to the previous year. The rise was in-spite of a drop off of Britons buying property in Spain the previous year.

Overall, the Spanish property market expanded by 14.4% in Q1, thanks also to a rise in local demand, which was up 14.2% year-on-year.

Following on from the slight dip in numbers following Brexit, Britons are returning to the Spanish property market, with their numbers making them the largest group of foreign property buyers in Spain.

Britons accounted for 2,150 of home purchases in Q1 and 15% in terms of foreign market share, whilst the French accounted for 10% and the Germans accounted for 8%.

“By nationality, foreign demand rose across the board, with the exception of the UK, Ireland [-5.8%], and Ukraine [-0.5%],” said Mark Stucklin of Spanish Property Insight. “Italian buyers led the way with an increase of 57.8%.”

One trend to note, according to the Spanish property expert, is the increase in buyers from the ‘rest of the world’, a number that has been rising since the start of 2014.

He continued: “All countries that account for less than 100 buyers a year are lumped into this group, and they now represent 41% of the foreign market.

“So demand for property in Spain is increasingly diversified and fragmented, with important implications for agents and developers.

 

Marena Murray – The Property Specialists promise to help you find a property that suits your needs - We will be there with you every step of the way. If you are interested in selling or buying in Spain, get in touch with us today on +34 968 175 087