October 2021 Property Market Report for Orgiva Property, Lanjaron Property and Lecrin Valley Property
Hello and welcome to this month’s property market report for Órgiva, Lanjarón, The Lecrin Valley and the Alpujarra.
Last month in Orgiva, there were a total of 103 properties advertised for sale however there are only actually 90 properties available because a number of them are multi-listed. The average price of these was 261 039 euros that equates to around 1405 euros per square metre.
However in October, the average sale price was only 81 715 euros or 747 euros per square meter and with 41 properties with an asking price over 250 000 euros in October, this clearly shows that there is a shift in the type of properties they’re selling, more to the lower end of the market than the upper end of the market.
Last month in awkward in Lanjaron there were 100 properties available for sale with an average price of 140,386 euros or 1865 euros per square metre. There were only 19 with an asking price in excess of 250,00 euros
Looking at the valley and in particular, in Lecrin itself, there were 31 properties available for sale with an average asking price of 156,817 euros or 878 euros per square metre. But, property prices that sold in October were an average of 107 583 euros or 636 per square metre. So, again the trend in the Lecrin Valley is following the trend, where low to medium price properties are selling quickly whereas higher price properties are taking a little longer but we will look at this in some more detail in a moment.
Why are these properties not selling? Well, first of all, there’s obviously a smaller market as you get to the higher price ranges but interestingly I’ve seen a number of properties recently where when asked to visit them because they were not selling and they were not getting any interest, the prices they were being marketed for were significantly higher than the current market value. There used to be a trend to put things on the market much higher and expect people to make a lower offer, unfortunately, the market has matured a little more since that used to be the case and what we are finding now is if something is, for example, 50 000 euros overpriced it’s just not attracting the buyers who will be looking in a price range 50 000 euros lower.
Bearing in mind many international buyers are used to markets where the difference between an asking price and the sale price is often as little as 3 to 5 % and in some cases over recent years, particularly in northern Europe the U.S, Canada and Australia those markets places have often gone over the asking price. This is due to the high demand and the higher volume of turnover in those markets.
Now those markets are far more mature and very different to the property market in this area however many of the same rules still apply if a property has been overvalued significantly and it’s not getting any interest it’s really worth having a full marketing review which of course you should be getting on a monthly basis anyway, but if you’ve been on the market for say, more than six months and are not experiencing any success it’s definitely worth having a full marketing review to ensure that your expectations are in line with the current trends in the market.
That said there have been a number of reports recently, one in particular from bank inter, where they have changed their forecasts on the Spanish property market at the beginning of the year. Bearing in mind we were still reacting to Covid lockdowns at the time, the predictions were that the market in Spain would fall around 1% however with current trends in the marketplace it’s predicted that the market will actually rise by 4% at the end of the year.
The latest Q3 figures released by the Registro and the notaries showed that there had actually been an increase in sales across the whole of Spain for Q3. This has certainly been our experience here as we’ve seen many international buyers now able to travel and they are have been purchasing properties.
I wouldn’t say snapping them up, but certainly trying to find before the increase in purchase tax at the end of the year and because they’ve been waiting a long time and there was a bit of pent-up demand.
That leads me on to the final segment of this month’s report that comes down to buyers fees!
Several international buyers in the last month alone have requested that they only wish to deal with ourselves in terms of looking for properties locally because we do not charge any buyers fees. Now interestingly this stems from the markets in many mature markets northern Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and the UK in particular where it’s actually illegal to charge buyers fees and whilst it’s not illegal in Spain, understandably many buyers are a little confused as to why they should be paying a fee for the privileges purchasing a home!
Now we have spoken to two buyers, in particular, this month who were interested in purchasing a property however because the agent was charging a buyer’s fee, they declined or decided not to proceed with even making an offer on the property. This is quite concerning because if you’re selling a property and buyers are being put off because they have to pay extra fees that they wouldn’t normally take into account, this does reduce your market quite considerably and you could find that you are missing out so do check with your agent to see if they’re charging buyers fees because that could lead to you as a seller having a big conflict of interest there as well in terms of that agent having to turn away buyers or potentially not even attracting buyers.
Let me know what you think about this in the comments below about whether you’d be happy paying a buyer’s fee if you were looking to purchase a house on top of all the other costs involved.
One question I do get asked a lot about is the costs involved in purchasing a property so look out for the extra video coming on our YouTube channel soon just click here and you can be kept up to date with new videos as they come out.
Thank you for taking the time to read this month’s market report and if you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch
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