LALZIT BAY ALBANIA
last year. Kim Brown of Overseas Guide Company points out that while the France buying guide was the most requested in 2009, Spain has now overtaken it in popularity. She points out that “with the weaker housing market there are plenty of deals to be had” – some as low as 25 per cent of the original price – and that the traditional attractions of Spain (weather, flight connections, solid infrastructure, and good finance deals) are still there. “The UK based agents that I know
are finding an upswing in interest in Spain from buyers”, Brown says. “There are so many great deals and in some cases there is 100 per cent financing. Potential buyers that held back knowing the boom was going to bring a bust are now very serious about making a good investment.” But it is true that UK buyers are now more aware of what can go wrong. One of the problems has been the
amateur ‘investors’ who wanted a holiday house that would pay for itself, she says. The expected rental demand didn’t materialise, making it difficult for some to keep up with mortgage payments, and the state of the market has made it difficult to sell such properties. Now, buyers are much more
educated and out to get a true bargain. Kim Brown sees the Spanish market as attracting two main types of investor. First, wealthy buyers are snapping up to-end luxury properties at a vast discount to peak prices. Secondly, “the true investors are targeting discounts of up to 75 per cent to 2006 prices”, often looking for distressed deals such as properties being sold by the banks. They are happy to wait five to
40 JULY 2011 PROPERTYdrum
‘We’ve priced apartments to open it up to the
international market.’ Peter walshe lalzit bay develoPment
10 years for prices to recover – as long as they get in at the right price. Perhaps strangely for a housing
market in such crisis, finance is still easy to find. Indeed some banks are offering 100 per cent finance on repossessed properties bought from them; standard mortgages, on the other hand, only offer up to 70 per cent loan to value, with rates starting from 3.5 per cent. So the Spanish market definitely
represents a major opportunity for UK estate agents; but it’s a very different opportunity from what we saw in the early years of the last decade. Buyers are hard-nosed, driven by economic fact rather than lifestyle aspirations, and extremely price-motivated for the most part.
Albania is probably worth a quick visit to Google maps for most of us!
the new Kid on the bloCK albania None of these markets will raise eyebrows – they are all relatively well known, both as holiday destinations and as real estate markets. But there’s one new kid on the block which definitely has an element of surprise – Albania. For many years, the country was
a strange and forbidden outpost of Chinese style communism, with concrete bunkers in every hillside and a standard of living that hadn’t got beyond the 1930s. But the country is now rapidly modernising – and tourism is starting to take off. Look at the map, and Albania’s
Buyers are hard nosed, driven by economic fact.
potential is obvious. Slovenia and Croatia always had well developed coastal tourism, with Montenegro taking up the running in recent years. Further south is the Greek coast, with the island of Corfu visible from the Albanian mainland. Albania is the one part of this coast that remains relatively undeveloped – and property prices remain low as a result. Peter Walshe, head of sales at the
MARBELLA SPAIN
‘The true investors are targeting discounts of up to 75% of 2006 prices.’ Kim brown overseas GUide ComPany
Lalzit Bay development, points out that EUR 29,000 will buy a studio flat there (or EUR 35,000 a one bed apartment), while two and three bedroom flats cost from EUR 72,000 – cheap by comparison to neighbouring countries. “We’ve priced apartments to open it up to the international market, so we’re competitive to Turkey, for instance,” he says. The development also offers villas, mainly to domestic buyers
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