It has been a very interesting year to date for the properties for sale Spain market in Marbella with so many outside factors affecting people's decision making process when they look to buy property in Marbella..
Factors at the present time include exchange rate, bad press, ill informed economic press about the Spanish property market and probably most importantly buyers being indecisive.
The exchange rate is now at a level that proves buyers are liars in that I had at least 50 potential buyers who promised they would make a decision to buy when the Euro hit 1.20 as that was the only thing stopping them from buying. Out of that 50 five are seriously now looking to buy and the other 90% have come up with various other reasons why its not the time to buy. The major argument now is they want it go to 1.30 and so on, so you get the drift.
When has there been any good press for Spain, never really it is always the same will all the press probably envious of those who can afford to own a Spanish property or who have left there own Country for pastures new. The most worrying press of recent times has been the strong economic arguments about the bank having to sell stock at losses and thus driving the house prices down further. However this is a basically flawed argument for the International buyer as he wouldn't want to buy any of the stock that the banks have to sell.
As for people being indecisive well there is nothing you can do about that but just point out the reality of the situation and that if you don't buy in 2010 it could be a very big mistake.
Once you have overcome all those obstacles then you have to find your client there dream property fortunately that is the easy part as long as they have a budget in excess of 200,000 for Marbella. There are still some great opportunities here in Marbella just less of them and less of them coming to the market.
Overall I reckon we will have a very busy September and October and expect things to go into sleep mode for the time being