Holiday home Spain or Portugal ?

goosebump said:

I get the need to do due diligence when it comes to buying property, but I don't subscribe to the view that you should agonise over a decision over a period of years either. Timing is always a factor. Markets change for better and for worse. You will always hear about bad experiences, never good ones.

I bought a property on the Costa Blanca 20 years ago on a 48 hour trip. Sold it in 3 months for a profit after owning for 4 years. A neighbour of mine bought a ex show apartment near Murcia while they were there on holiday. They are perfectly happy with it 3 years later, and would not be able to afford something similar now.

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Sorry goosebump, I didn't mean to suggest that you should spend years agonising over the decision to buy or not
My last paragraph was just my own anecdotal experience of how my views of a little village in a small part of Spain had changed
My main point was in the third paragraph and I should have added that at the very least if a person is buying a foreign property
they shouldn't rely on the experience of a whistle stop tour of properties but rather they should spend time in the area first
By that I mean if the person intends to escape the Irish winter then they should at the very least spend a winter in their chosen area first
To me its a very prudent thing to do, you wouldn't buy a car without test driving it first like wise you wouldn't ask a person to marry you....
So is it prudent to drop €200k on a property after only seeing it for a couple of hours at most

A couple of things occurred to me over the weekend
It's my understanding that the "estate agents" fees are not paid by the seller but by the purchaser in Spain, now this in theory shouldn't make a difference at the end of the day but I feel that these "estate agents" if that's what they really are aren't focused on either the seller or the buyer and are more interested in shifting properties by selling the dream to potential purchasers especially on these whistle stop selling tours, just a personal observation
The other thing I've observed a few times is that the sellers can sometimes be open to doing a hybrid deal of renting their property to a prospective buyer for three, six months or even a year so as to get the deal over the line, this of course would be reflected in the purchase price so as it's cost neutral to both parties

Anyway no mater what you do or where you end up I'm sure you're going to love Spain and will have nothing to lose but regret

I've set up a consultation with a Spanish solicitor to go over a few things.

One thing that is relevant is that Catalunya passed a decree in Dec 2023 that limits the number of rental tourist licenses to a fixed number per inhabitants in a given town. This will reduce the amount of rental property that is available, and make short terms lets harder, so I guess it probably should have an impact on prices as it plays out over the next year. it doesn't appear to impact seasonal rental (i.e. renting out for a month at a time).

Another issue is that a lot of Russians are locked into property in Spain because they can't deposit more than €100k to a Spanish bank account. I guess that could also change, and more supply could become available.

On the flip side, lots of French are moving into the Costa Brava and Costa Dorada, as they are being priced out of French holiday property due to ever increasing taxes on 2nd homes.