Mediaboss Marketing

Property sales prices in Spain at the upper end of the market will continue to fall modestly in the first half of 2014 and begin to stabilize as the year goes on, it is claimed.

Popertywire.com reported that in the last 12 months luxury independent estate agency Lucas Fox says it has seen its sales revenue nearly triple, mainly due to Northern European buyers returning to the market as well as a surge in interest from Russia, the Middle East and China who are attracted by the introduction of Spains recently introduced golden visa scheme.

In its latest report it says that 2013 was its best year to date for its Barcelona office with the average transaction value close to the one million Euro mark. The number of transactions almost tripled, a trend that the company expects to continue in 2014.

Co-founder Alexander Vaughan, Lucas Fox, said the last 12 months have been a pivotal year in the Spanish luxury property market. Confidence returned and, along with it, increasing numbers of international buyers, enticed back to the market by historic low prices in some of Spains most desirable areas.

The new Spanish residency laws allowing non-European clients to gain Spanish residency if they invest 500,000 or more in property means that British and European clients are now competing with their Russian, Chinese and Middle East counterparts for the best deals. There are good investment opportunities to be had but in some areas, sellers still need to adjust property asking prices in order for the market to regain momentum, he said.

With prices in prime locations expected to level off in 2014, Lucas Fox head of business development, Jason Ham, predicts that the new wave of foreign investors will not be able to resist some of the attractive prices on offer.

What we are witnessing is a combination of investment factors. These include attractive opportunities for quality property in desirable internationally famous prime locations such as Barcelona, Marbella and Ibiza; confidence rapidly returning to the market with the real possibility of capital appreciation in the medium term; the Golden Visa effect; the Spanish lifestyle factor and the need for many overseas investors to put their money and sometimes their families in a more secure and politically stable country. All of these factors combined have created a unique window of opportunity, Fox said.

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Spanish luxury home prices to fall