Brand new properties together worth almost €5 million have been sold in the Almeria region of south-east Spain in the past three months by the Cheltenham-based Almanzora Group.
The achievement, described by the company as a turning point in recent market conditions, comprises sales of 12 properties – a mix of good quality individual villas, beach houses and cottages – at Desert Springs, Europe’s only international award-winning luxury family resort and championship desert golf course, in the traditional fishing village Villaricos and at nearby Playa Marques where a three-bedroom, two-bathroom beach house on its seven kilometre long Great Sandy Beach, El Playazo, sold for €575,000.
Reporting total sales worth €4,937,500, the company’s sales and marketing manager, Simon Coaker, said: “Over the years, the property market in Spain has proved to be extremely cyclical, much more so than it is in the UK; this recent market activity suggests that the wheel is turning again, at least for the better quality, more individual, properties in new and progressive ‘upwardly mobile’ locations. For that reason, now is the time to pick out and buy the better new properties available in those areas in Spain.
”Prices have been at their lowest for six years but are bound to start rising again if sales of such properties continue at this level. No matter how great the oversupply of poor quality, mass built apartments, in secondary locations around the old tourism centres, the actual supply of good quality individual properties in relatively new, less developed, locations – which are the future of residential tourism in Spain – remain in short supply.”
Simon predicts: “Although setbacks occur in any economy, the overall market in Spain and in its coastal provinces will recover in due course to even greater values, undreamed-of at the height of the previous boom.”
He says that this is because, despite the recent cyclic downturn in confidence affecting the immediate market, more powerful long term underlying trends ensure that potential demand continues over the longer period.
“Not least amongst these trends are the ageing population across Europe coupled with ‘regional shift’ from the cold north of Europe to the warm south, and in particular, the sun belt that is southern Spain,” says Simon. “This is made possible by Europeanization itself, the common currency, increased mobility within Europe and improved communications. In effect the long term market for property in the south of Spain includes the whole of northern Europe.”
The Almanzora Group www.almanzora.com