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The Spanish Property Market Is Heating Up
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  According to Spain's Institute of National Statistics (INE) the year on year price increase in the first quarter of 2016 is the highest since 2007. See graph above. The average price of a resale property was 6.4% higher than the same period in 2015. And the rate of increase is accelerating. Also on the up are property sales. See graph above.
Discovering Andalucia: Las Alpujarras
Discovering Andalucia: Las Alpujarras
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The cities of Andalucia are exceptionally beautiful but, if you are more interested in living in the countryside, in a finca or a cortijo, the Alpujarras is a wonderful area to consider, especially if you like walking. Sandwiched between the Sierra Nevada to the north and the Mediterranean to the south, this is a hilly region, full of stu
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How To Live like A Spaniard: Breakfast
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In Britain, where I come from, breakfast is the meal that is most likely to be eaten at home. Head south, across France and to Spain and, the further south you get, the more outdoors eating and drinking takes place in the morning. And, once you have bought a property in Andalucia, one of the best ways to discover your neighbourhood, and meet your n
Living With Nature On Your Doorstep
Living With Nature On Your Doorstep
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Four years ago my husband and I led a 'city life', he was a successful commercial photographer and I was the Director of the Netherlands Institute. But there was something unsatisfactory about our lives and we decided that we wanted to make a change. Not just a change of country but a bigger, all encompassing change of life and lifestyle. We wanted
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Lemons And Witches
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The huge lemon tree on our patio in the Albayzin district of Granada is, and always has been, ecological and entirely natural. And just as in the human population people are made in all shapes and sizes, so it is with lemons! In the photo there are a few of this year's plentiful crop. Most are round, the shape associated with lemons, but some are e
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Why Spain Is “Safe As Houses”
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One of the first questions you might ask, whether buying a property at home or in Spain, is "Is the area safe?". In the challenging economic conditions of the last decade, which have hit southern Europe harder than most, it is easy to imagine that, given the significant increases in unemployment and poverty, crime figures would
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Andalucía Benefits From An Improving Property Market
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What goes up must come down, so we’re told, but, in property, it is often the opposite. After a tough decade, the Spanish housing market is recovering, and Andalucía, in particular, is benefitting. Foreigners constitute a significant proportion of Spanish property buyers, as Spanish Property Insight notes. In the first quarter of 2016, 99.427
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How To Live Like A Spaniard: The Hours
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One of the first things that might have struck you when you first visited Spain was how empty the restaurants were at 1pm, or 8pm, and how people seemed to think nothing of eating breakfast at 11am, or meeting for a drink past 10pm at night. I, for one, remember being laughed at for going for churros y chocolate at 4pm; churros are a classic breakf
Ignorance And Forgetting
Ignorance And Forgetting
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On our patio in the Albayzin district of Granada we have a large olive tree. Like the lemon tree on the other side of the patio it is a force of nature. Every second year the crop of black olives is huge. In the past I have tried curing them to rid the bitterness. Without much success.  The tree grows at such a phenomenal rate that it invades
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Paradise Lost And Found
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We had been thinking for many years about retiring to Spain and each year we spent some of our holidays visiting different areas.  Les was born and grew up in the West Indies and wanted to get back to warmer weather than that of England.  Auds is from the Emerald Isle and a sun lover.  We have two children, both with commitments in E
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New Holiday Lettings Legislation
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On 12 May 2016 a decree enacted in 2012 (Decree 28/2012) comes into force. It has important bearings on people who rent their homes or parts of their property for holiday lets on a daily or weekly basis. This affects many of our clients. Under this decree all persons who let their properties in this way will be required to register the activity. Th
How Much Cash Can I Legally Carry?
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In a recent legislative amendment the national government has empowered local authorities to reduce the amount of IBI payable according to the energy efficiency of a property. There is a sliding scale of reductions ranging from 4% for a class E property to 20 % for a class A property. But don’t get too excited. Firstly, of all of the properties we
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Spanish Health Service - Good or Bad?
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Last week I met an English resident of rural Andalusia who, around a year ago, went to see his local GP complaining of chest pains. It was diagnosed as bronchitis but, three weeks later, when it hadn't go away he returned to the surgery. A second doctor immediately arranged for him to have tests at a hospital. Guess what? The result was that he had
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Bank Repossessions - Fact Or Fantasy?
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Imagine you are a Spanish home owner unable to meet your monthly mortgage repayments. You have two choices: either sell the property, pay off the loan and pocket whatever difference remains or sit tight and do nothing until the bank eventually obtains an order to evict you. In countries such as the United Kingdom the lender takes the risk that the
Taxation Levels When Buying Property in Andalucia
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Each time a property is transferred from one person (physical or legal) to another, the transaction attracts an Impuesto Sobre Transmisión de Patrimonio (I.T.P.). Or, in English, Tax on the Transfer of Wealth. This tax is payable by the buyer and is levied by the Autonomous Region level of government. In the case of Andalucia it is the Junta de And