Tag Archives: Costa Brava properties

The Costa Brava gets a boost with the promotion of the region as a luxury brand

The Costa Brava is being promoted as an exclusive and up-market destination thanks to an initiative by 16 of the region’s most luxurious hotels. ‘Costa Brava Hotels de Luxe’ is a hotel association whose aim is to strengthen the Costa Brava brand and increase its international projection, particularly to more wealthy clients.
As well as attracting potential clients to their establishments they are promoting the area’s top quality restaurants, independent designer shops, numerous leisure facilities and cultural activities.
The association includes the five star Grand Luxury Hotel (La Gavina) and seven five star hotels (Guitart Monterrey, Mas de Torrent Hotel & Spa, Hotel Peralada Wine Spa & Golf Serhs, Rigat Park & Spa Beach Hotel, Sallés Hotel & Spa Cala del Pi, Hotel Santa Marta, Hotel Vistabella) and seven four star establishments (Hotel Aigua Blava, Hotel Castell d’Empordà, La Costa Golf & Beach Resort, NM Suites Hotel, S’Agaró Hotel, Sallés Hotel Mas Tapiolas, Hotel Restaurant Sa Punta, Torremirona Hotel Relais).
The founders recognize that the Costa Brava has endless attractions for the more exclusive visitor, but up until now have not been well marketed.

Lucas Fox Costa Brava has numerous Luxury properties to its name and Director Tom Maidment agrees that the initiative to promote the region as an exclusive destination is well overdue
“The Costa Brava has so much to offer on a luxury level. The area boasts some truly outstanding golf courses such as PGA Catalunya and Golf Empordá . Thanks to Ferran Adrià and then Joan Roca, a whole generation of chefs are offering fabulous cuisine, many of whose establishments have received Michelin stars. Its cultural heritage is second to none such as the Iberian settlement of Ullastret and the Greek and Roman Ruins of Empúries. It also boasts wonderful natural parks and botanical gardens and, of course, its breathtaking rugged coastline with its beautiful bays and unspoilt coastal villages.”

The group behind the project recognize they are launching the initiative at an extremely sensitve time due to the economic crisis in Spain, but are intending to promote it beyond its borders. Their website www.costabravahotelsdeluxe.com has information in six different languages: Catalan, Spanish, English, French, German and Russian.

The site includes information on restaurants with Michelin stars, exclusive winery offers, tours and tastings, recommended shops, golf courses, luxury boat rentals, sports activities and cultural and heritage visits, including numerous summer festivals.

Lucas Fox Costa Brava has recently added some outstanding luxury properties to its portfolio including

Exquisite luxury Girona country estate in the stunning countryside surroundings of La Garrotxa, just a few minutes from the attractive medieval town of Besalú

Luxury first line Costa Brava property with stunning views overlooking the beautiful bay of Sa Riera, near Begur

Luxury Girona 10-bedroom country mansion in Pals - one of the most sought-after locations of the Costa Brava

An exquisite, luxury six-bedroom country property to buy just 10-minutes from Girona city and 30-minutes from the beaches of the Costa Brava

Please contact Director of Lucas Fox Costa Brava Tom Maidment on +34 648092334 or via email Tom@lucasfox.com for more information about the above properties or any other Costa Brava property on the Lucas Fox website

What Next For Barcelona Luxury Property in 2011?

Market Reports include predictions for the next six months

With the release of the Lucas Fox Market Reports this week, there is bound to be some contention as the agency’s Directors share their insights and predictions on the future for Barcelona luxury property, Costa Brava villas and Ibiza real estate for the next six months and into 2012.

The Barcelona luxury property market is analyzed in the Lucas Fox half-yearly Market Report

Each half-year, Lucas Fox International Properties releases a compilation of data to summarize the local property market conditions in its three principal locations: Barcelona, Costa Brava and Ibiza. With the launch of a new design and more comprehensive analysis for the market report formats, Lucas Fox Directors have shared their analysis of the markets they are working in day by day, month by month.

Barcelona real estate may be a slightly more reliable market to analyze and second-guess than the at-times volatile national housing market has been over the past few years. Meanwhile, the prices of Costa Brava villas and the continuing demand in Ibiza real estate show that there are some signs of a steadying trend – particularly at the luxury end of the market – making it possible to forecast the next six months without too much out of a leap of faith. All the same, there are distinctly different perspectives amongst analysts as to the state of the local housing markets, and the Directors were well aware there are bound to be alternative (and vocal) opinions.

Some analysts have suggested that there is still some bottoming of the market to occur, while others are enthusiastically looking for bargain-priced properties.

Market Reports also cover the sales rates for Costa Brava villas and apartments, and Ibiza real estate for the January to June 2011

Given these differences in interpreting the housing markets, the Directors wanted to offer their clients and regular readers a firmer sense of what is happening locally, so that investors and sellers can make more objective decisions.

“We predict that for the immediate future buyers will be able to secure Barcelona properties at competitive prices”, affirms Alex Vaughan, Director of Lucas Fox. However, he also tempers his confidence with a recognition that the market is changing in the way people are buying properties, and the investment cycles necessary to hold on to quality luxury property in Barcelona: “. Given the current economic conditions and lack of finance available to local buyers, international clients should be willing to hold on to their properties for longer as it will be several years before the next growth cycle.”

The Lucas Fox Market Reports for January – June 2011 review the market dynamics for Barcelona luxury property, Costa Brava villas and apartments and Ibiza real estate. They are available for download from the Lucas Fox website and from the property guides page of our blog. Make sure you also subscribe to the Lucas Fox blog to be kept up to date with future releases.

Spain Real Estate Market Reports: Forthcoming Release

Luxury apartments Barcelona, Costa Brava Villas and Ibiza Real Estate

Next week, Lucas Fox International Properties will release three half-yearly real estate market reports analysing the January to June 2011 period. This includes analysis of:

Luxury apartments Barcelona
Costa Brava villas
Ibiza real estate.

Readers can download copies of the reports from the Lucas Fox website and from this blog’s Spanish Real Estate Market Reports page. If you are interested in keeping an eye on when is the best time to buy property in Spain, we encourage you to subscribe to the Lucas Fox blog so we can keep you up to date with future releases of the market reports.

The data that is used in the report comes from a variety of sources:

online real estate portals
Spanish housing and statistics Governmental departments
Lucas Fox sales data (for example, sales of Costa Brava villas in the first half of 2011), and
feedback from Lucas Fox luxury property buyers.

A key complaint about Spanish property data over the past few years has been its inconsistency. This is often the case with economic figures, and Spain has received its fair share of complaints. This has included complaints pointing to differences in how property data is presented, and disagreements about the core set of economic metrics that should be used to forecast future growth and prosperity for the country more broadly.

For example, in July this year, leading economic agencies ranging from the Bank of Spain, the Spanish Government, the IMF and OECD each drew on different sets of metrics to calculated forecasted growth in household consumption. This resulted in differences from 0.9% growth predicted for 2011 (by a consensus of independent analysts) to 1.6% growth (predicted by the OECD).

Differences in forecasting and analysing property markets is similar.

To address the disparity in ways of reporting housing data, Lucas Fox triangulates the data sources used when collating our half-yearly market reports. As leaders in the Spanish luxury property market, we are also able to compare the figures to the experiences of our sales staff and the feedback we receive from our customers, property buyers, and recent property sellers. This helps us ensure the data reflects the real experiences in the market, in each of the three key locations.

“Triangulation of data” is a process where several sources are used to measure the same topic. For example, when looking at house sale prices, we looked at monthly data reports from:

leading online web portals fotocasa and idealista,
an industry housing price index designed by real estate portal Kyero in partnership with real estate analysts Tinsa
Spanish Government Department of Housing and Development
Spanish National Statistics Institute.

Make sure you subscribe to the Lucas Fox blog to be sent a copy of the market reports as soon as they are released.

The reports cover:

The real estate markets in Barcelona, Costa Brava and Ibiza
The luxury property markets in each location: the market for luxury apartments Barcelona, sales of Costa Brava villas, and the strength of Ibiza real estate
Property sales data summary
Long term rental in Barcelona
The short term property rental market in each location
Foreign investment
Predictions for the remainder of 2011.

In the meantime, here is one of our sources for data for our research. It was only able to help us look at some facts about the first quarter of 2011, but it is an interesting insight into the Spanish Government’s official figures. It was used by the Spanish Housing and Development Ministers during their roadshow tour to encourage foreign investment in Spanish property:

Presentations released by the National Department of Housing and Development to encourage foreign property investment.

Subscribe to the Lucas Fox blog to be sent a copy of the luxury apartments Barcelona, Costa Brava villas, and Ibiza real estate market reports for 2011.

Parents eye Costa Brava properties

UK newspaper The Telegraph recently highlighted the superb Caldes de Malavella country house, one of the Lucas Fox Costa Brava properties recently – but this was more of an aside for an article that focused on another business: mumabroad, run by Carrie Frais, the wife of Lucas Fox Costa Brava Director Tom Maidment.

Relocating to Spain into a newly purchased Costa Brava property, for example, requires a good deal of planning and organization. This is double the case if you are relocating as part of a young family. We recently looked at some of the worries parents have for their children when relocating, with language being the chief cause of anxiety.

It is a perfect time to begin planning your relocation while you are still finalizing your property purchase. Several tasks do require some lead time, so planning relocation alongside your property acquisition can save time and even identify additional questions you can discuss with your Lucas Fox representative.

Here are a few more tips to keep in mind when you are relocating with young children:

Start investigating schools as soon as you have decided on a property purchase, especially if you are planning to send your children to an international school. For starters, review the website of your Consulate in Spain for their education advice pages and make contact with the council or agency that overseas their education services. For example, for UK residents, the British Embassy website recommends contacting the British Council to identify schools that provide an English-equivalent education.
Collect any administrative and education paperwork together for possible use in future school applications. You may be required to submit school reports or other documentation when applying.
As part of your property purchase, you will want to use this paperwork to register as a local resident with your town hall office. This is a necessary step before being able to enroll your children in school as well.
While young children will become bilingual easily, older children may need help with language learning at first. Consider whether you should hire a private tutor for your older children to assist them with their settling in.
Register for a Spanish-language class yourself! It will be a great support for your children if you are also able to communicate in Spanish.
Join internet discussion groups like www.mumabroad.com to get in touch with other parents who have relocated to Spain. You can build friendships, learn from others, and have a sense of instant community by participating in the online forums even before you leave your home country.

More young families are showing interest in Costa Brava properties lately thanks to the lifestyle the area can offer. Safety, great weather, beautiful surroundings and an accessibility to major civic centres all rate highly for families when looking at property in Costa Brava.

We also want to give a quick congratulations to Carrie Frais and her business partner Rebecca Laidlaw for creating the supportive and informative mumabroad website.

Costa Brava Properties and the Mysterious Landscape

The latest pride of the Dali Theatre-Museum in the northern Spanish town of Figueres, Landscape with Mysterious Elements, is now on exhibition, and makes a perfect stop-off when viewing Costa Brava properties. Purchased for close to 8 million Euros, the 1934 work by the world’s most recognized surrealist painter, Salvador Dali, is now displayed as part of the museum’s permanent collection.

The purchase is a coup for the museum, which is dedicated to promoting Dali’s works and his impact on the world art stage. In negotiations since 2004, the Museum was finally able to convince the previous owners that the painting would be better appreciated by a worldwide audience and more easily preserved in the pristine environment of the museum, rather than continue in the hands of the private collector.

Figueres is a northern town slightly inland from Spain’s stunning Costa Brava coastline, and makes a great rest point when inspecting the properties Costa Brava has to offer.

Costa Brava is expected to have a strong tourist season this year, as Spain continues to receive a surge in visitor numbers throughout the summer. This will bring holidaymakers to the area who are also interested in viewing the properties Costa Brava has available for sale, while travelling around the scenic landscape or when settling in to their holiday accommodation along the northern Spanish coast. Since the start of the year, airport passenger arrivals have been up by 20%, and this area is forecasted to see a sustained tourist increase of between 5 and 10% throughout the summer months.

Costa Brava properties home of Dali's museum

Viewing a new Dali acquisition makes an excellent sidetrip when inspecting Costa Brava properties

Landscape with Mysterious Elements is one of two significant works purchased by the Foundation this year, and will be on exhibition with the gallery’s other most recent acquisition, Study for ‘Honey is Sweeter than Blood’.

The Dali Theatre-Muesum makes a perfect excursion when holidaying in the area. There are also night exhibition opening hours throughout August. Visitors are encouraged to beat the queues and arrive early. If you are staying in the area while inspecting Costa Brava properties, a half-day at the Museum makes an excellent sidetrip and by arriving first thing, you can enjoy all that the Museum has to offer without the pressure of crowds limiting your viewing.