The bottom of the Costa del Sol property market is now... and that's official. Well, as soon as they figure it out it will be!

Based on an analysis of our own business trends and my personal instincts – both of which have been tested in the Costa del Sol property market for some 22 years now – I can finally answer the oft-asked question, and state with certainty – probably long before you’ll hear it elsewhere – that we have now finally reached the ‘bottom of the market’ for Costa del Sol real estate.

How can I do this ahead of official government statistics or our economic guru journalists? Well, here are the facts of the matter…

FACT

First and foremost, it’s because it is we in VIVA – who along with both our Vendors and Buyers – actually create the statistics and news that the media and authorities eventually review or commentate upon.

FACT

Everything they do or report on has to be based on the analysis of our own real activity and our own actual recorded results, whether they are obtained from the Land Registry or the Hacienda tax authorities.

FACT

As an Estate Agent, it is we – together with Buyers and Vendors – who are all at the forefront. We are the ones who are making things happen, or otherwise.

FACT

The trouble is, however, that by the time they get their initial reports on our activity, they – the people you rely upon to know – are at least 6 months behind in government circles.

Then as our final data is passed from a department and up through a ministry, and processed by a range of different analysts along the way, it is often a full 12 months before a true assessment is produced and published.

FACT

Only then, is it fully reported upon to the general public by our friends the economic journalists as being ‘officially’ the bottom of the market, or otherwise, more than a year later.

SUMMARY

So, from the coal face, I can tell you this much today, and with absolute certainty.

Vendors in general understood about a year ago that if they truly wanted to sell, they would have to drop their prices anywhere by 30-50% from the peak of 2006.

It has in truth been a long, slow and gradual process taking four or five years for such genuine falls and acceptance to occur.

Vendors had waited for a recovery, but it never happened. Prices eventually simply crashed. Not helped of course, but exacerbated by the overall credit crisis and economic collapse.

CONCLUSION

The genuine Buyers who are now active in the market also understand and increasingly find, however, that while there are indeed some great buys out there, there aren’t so many of them.

In fact often they find hardly any. Why? In these times, really… Why?

The simple fact, which most Buyers are now realising, is that people who don’t have to sell, simply won’t sell. Just because a Buyer is in the mood and has the money in his or her pocket, doesn’t make everyone come at a rush. Indeed, currently we have by far the lowest number of enquiries from Vendors in our entire history.

FACT

Ask yourself, would you sell in today’s market unless you absolutely had to?

If you do buy at the bottom of the market, you will of course get the great benefit of the capital growth return when the market eventually reverts to its previous peak, but be careful Mr & Mrs Buyer, remember the old saying:

“He who goes by price alone, becomes the willing victim of he who sets his stall by price alone.”

So, when you do buy, then consider real value and good use. Buy well and not just by price.

And remember me, and this post…

I say none of this lightly For years people have been asking me, “Chris, when is it the bottom of the market?” I’ve had hundreds of days in which to call it. Yet I haven’t done so… until now.

So in one year’s time when they are reporting the bottom, then of course a recovery in the market, remember me. I told you so – and it happened today!