Hello everyone and welcome to this month’s market report for the property market in Lecrin Valley Orgiva and Lanjaron, as usual, we’ll have a look at the facts, figures and statistics around the property market in these locations and also look at the wider property news. There have been some quite interesting developments this month so there’s plenty to talk about.
First, let’s have a look at the statistics in Orgiva last month there were
85 properties available for sale with an average asking price of 252,658 euros
This equates to an average price per Sqm of 1,418 euros
This is a slight drop on previous months and we’ll talk about this in a bit more detail later.
looking at Lanjaron last month there were 99 properties available for sale with an average asking price of 140,583 euros or 1 857 euros per square meter.
The market’s been fairly stable in Lanjaron, in terms of the number of properties available but there are some specific movements and trends in the Lanjaron area. We will come on to those in a moment.
Moving over to the Lecrin Valley. This month we’ll have a look at Pinos del Valle
There were 22 properties available for sale with an average asking price of 191 000 euros or around
1.159 euros per square meter.
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The property market’s been fairly stable in the whole area over the last few months coming off the back of 2021 where we saw a record number of house sales and this has continued into January
and February this year.
So what’s happening overall?
Well in Orgiva we’ve seen a decrease in the number of properties available. The available stock is starting to reduce but there’s no shortage in the demand from buyers. So, is this going to have an impact on prices? Well at the moment we’ll need to wait and see but, it is certainly moving in particular styles of property and that is a general trend overall.
In Lanajron, whilst there is still the same number of properties available what we’ve seen is new properties coming to the market that have been priced correctly and with the right professional marketing are actually selling quite quickly. There is however a particular style of older property for reform, in particular with 1960s style kitchens and bathrooms etc, that just not attracting demand at the moment.
In Pinos Del Valle we are seeing a similar thing, townhouses which are in a good, Scandi style, are certainly getting a lot of interest at the moment. However, properties for reform that are tired and dated just don’t have the demand. Part of the reason for this is due to the building costs that are involved nowadays. The cost of building materials has gone up exponentially over the last 12 months, to the point where some building materials are twice the price that they were 12 months ago. This is having an impact in terms of the investment that people want to make and the time and the trouble that they’d need to go to in order to reform a property. Actually, if it’s not priced correctly, for the same amount of money you can buy one already done. So what would be the advantage of buying one that needs a lot of time and work and effort spent on it?
This moves us on to some other property news, this is around the demand that we have seen looking at different regions and countries where our buyers come from.
Starting with the Brits, we’ve actually seen in the last month a 22% increase in enquiries from the Brits, now why might this be? Are they suddenly flooding back to the market? Well kind of,
in a way yes. The main reason seems to be that the concerns over Brexit and being able to get visas and live here has subsided now. This is because after a year or so of that being the norm people are starting to understand the process of how to go about it there are lots of companies out there that can help with this process as well.
Now for most homebuyers in this area, the changes, particularly regarding income haven’t made a significant impact because they already had the income to be able to be purchasing a property. Wanting to live here full time, usually retiring to the area. What this means is as the understanding around the paperwork has become simplified if you like, as people know what’s needed and this has meant that there are more people applying to get visas to move over here. So we’ve certainly seen a big increase in the number of Brits looking in the Lecrin Valley, Orgiva and Lanajron areas for permanent homes.
The holiday home market has not yet returned to where it was, partly impacted by the 90/180-day rule. For the “swallows”, the people that used to come here and live for six months of the year, there is less demand for that market, however, smaller townhouses around the 60 000
euro mark we’re certainly seeing strong demand for those for holiday homes at the moment. There is some of that market coming back.
Interestingly one of the other areas we’re seeing a huge increase in demand from in the last few months is from Belgium and the Netherlands. This is not unusual, it happens at this time of year as the winters are often long and drawn out in Northern Europe whereas, well I’m just looking out the window as I write this and it’s sunny Spain again. After some much-needed rain, but it’s often this time of year when people have been through a long, drawn-out winter that they are looking to
move to Southern Spain and enjoy a much nicer climate. So Belgium and the Netherlands have
seen a strong increase in demand from buyers over the last quarter.
The demand for Cortijos continues to outperform all other sectors of the market, this goes back to what I was saying earlier in the facts and figures that whilst the number of properties overall to the market is down Cortijos in particular, with such huge demand are just not hanging around on the market. If they’re priced correctly and marketed correctly. Quite often they’re going within days at the moment and we’ve seen very strong demand. There is no obvious sign that this is going to
the decline at the moment so Cortijos are outperforming the general marketplace.
Townhouses, having suffered quite considerably during the covid period, when everyone wanted outside space, took a real dive in terms of demand, and also a bit of a hit on prices. However, what we’re starting to see is that demand is slowly returning for the right type of property. As I mentioned earlier, demand for properties needing reform is subdued, unless they are priced accordingly to take into account the increase in building material costs, but smaller houses are certainly seeing
an increase in demand. It’s the larger townhouses that need reform that are not really hitting the spot at the moment. It doesn’t mean however they’re not sellable and there is still a demand for them it’s just that it needs a very specific type of marketing to attract the very specific audience that requires them.
In terms of the overall stock levels, because that is falling we are seeing prices starting to increase
and over certainly over recent months, with the euro being under pressure from many currencies, particularly the USA, where we’ve seen an increase in demand of nearly 7% this in the last month. In the UK there’s still a strong percentage of buyers and with the pound being very strong against
the euro this is meaning that buyers from the US and the UK, in particular, have much more buying power in their pocket.
It’s really important to have a good understanding of how currency fluctuations work and the impact that they have on the market in the local area. You can see more about that here
So overall how’s the market looking?
Going forward into March and looking at a new spring market this is where we start to see a lot of buyers coming in from Northern Europe in particular at the end of the long winter. Usually, we start to hit half term times together with Easter coming up next month that’s a traditionally busy time for a lot of people to put their plans into action.
Here we’re certainly expecting demand to continue and very much so for particular types of
property such as Cortijos. So the outlook at the moment is looking reasonably good for
the property market. World events could, of course, have a significant impact on that and certainly
our thoughts here go out to everybody in Ukraine, this is a terrible thing for the world and we fully support the Ukrainian people in this in this difficult time.
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