Marbella Real Estate Market Report 2009
Marbella is quality. In bad times, quality holds its value. In good
times, quality increases in value. It’s as simple as that. If you
buy quality, you should certainly conserve your capital and you are quite sure
of increased value over time.
All over the financially shaken world, people agree that 2009 is time for
a change. In Marbella, perhaps we should change our attitude when looking
at property.
Instead of thinking about money, let’s think about real value. Let’s
think about how nice the house is or how splendid the view is from the apartment
terrace. For too long, people on the Costa del Sol have approached property
asking only the question: How much can I get for it three years from
now?
Even the old established estate agents, who have seen booms and busts come
and go, refer frequently to “investment opportunities”. We
all have come to look at things primarily in terms of their cash value.
Well, an over-emphasis on that attitude is how we got into this mess in the
first place. And when the bankers started doing it, the end became inevitable. A
bank that lends money to people they know cannot pay it back has lost its head. Their
only way out was to pass on the bad loans to other banks or investors, disguised
as solid collateral.
The same goes for the stockbrokers and investment companies, where young “geniuses” earned
fat commissions for inventing products that no one could understand. And
even more for those opportunistic real estate agents who fast-talked buyers
into putting down payments on four apartments in order to get rich quickly
in a rising market. When all the buyer wanted was a holiday flat to enjoy… Now
we are all paying for it.
All the numbers look bad. The stock market is down, the banks which
made those bad loans are now in trouble because the people cannot pay them
back and the houses the bank figured as security are now worth less than they
were before. More people are out of work. On top of everything else,
the pound has dropped to practically the value of the euro, making it much
more expensive for the British to buy property in Spain.
Furthermore, the recession is Europe-wide and worldwide. We have always
figured that, if one country crashes, another country will be doing all right
and will take up the slack in the Costa del Sol property market.
Not this time. It’s the Perfect Storm. Everything imaginable
has gone wrong, both in the virtual economy, which is stock market numbers,
and in the real economy, where people can no longer buy cars, so the carmakers
are going to the wall. And this means the factory workers are out of a job.
Everything Real Is Going Up
So, what is there to be cheerful about? Well, everything real about
Marbella is actually going up. One of the most important factors here
is government investment in improving the quality of life. This investment
had already started, before the Crash of 2008, as this will probably be known. The
money flow began simply because it was our turn for State investment funds. The
input has since been increased and spread wider as part of the measures to
re-activate the economy.
The national government, the Andalusian regional government and the Málaga
provincial authorities are all pouring hundreds of millions of euros into improving
basic services on the Costa del Sol. Let’s take a look at some of the
things going on around Marbella.
Read on for insight into the realities of the Marbella Property market
