Just a brief comment on this Newsletter to inform about three property laws that have been recently modified in Spain so, although I will have coming articles from experts on these issues commenting on them, I wanted to at least mentioned them. If someone may be affected, he may check his particular situation with a lawyer or tax advisor.
1.– Horizontal property law in short term rentals so the communities can put a veto on short term rental if a qualified majority decides so.
2.– Rentals law. There are changes on the law that regulates the rental of properties in Spain. It is worth taking a look to those changes.
3.– Mortgage law. There are also changes on the law that regulates the mortgages.
If we summarize the real estate market in the area, we can say that prices are going up, inventory is growing too much and transactions are going down. In Marbella and on second hand properties, the number of sales has been reduced in the fourth quarter by 21,2% and in Benahavis by 11,9% when compared with the same periods of 2017. If we take only Marbella, that number was also negative when comparing the third quarters of 2017 and 2018. We can see the same negative numbers in most municipalities of the Costa del Sol when looking at the fourth quarter of 2018 vs the same one of 2017. Things look bad when analyzing those numbers but the feeling in the first quarter of 2019 was relatively good. What it is clear is that, with this extremely high inventory, that keeps on growing with all the new constructions increasing and the prices going up, only the properties with really competitive prices will be sold and that is exactly what we are seeing in this market and what we are selling.ng competition, to be able to sell it is very important to have a competitive pricing, and new developments are coming up, which will increase even more the inventory.