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Benidorm Playa Levante Foreigners who buy properties in Spain valued at 160,000 Euros or more may automatically get residence cards in a new Government initiative to encourage homebuyers from overseas. It has been assumed that the move is mainly aimed at Chinese and Russian nationals, but the Government does not believe it will lead to a sudden rush for residence certificates to be approved. The threshold of 160,000 euros is merely a guideline which may change in the future with fluctuations in the market. They say it is mainly so that when holiday home owners from outside the EU wish to travel to Spain to spend time in their properties, they will not have to apply for a visa every time they want to get into the country. With well over a quarter of a million homes in Spain sitting empty and most Spanish people being unable to afford to buy them because of fear of job loss or, where they are working, banks' new restrictions on offering mortgage finance, the only way to reviv...

£/EUR Range of the week: 1.2398 – 1.2452 Variance of the week on £10k =  €54 Rates this week have been steady and are consolidating here with little indication of the next move in GBPEUR. For the UK, data has been incredibly light this week, with the main event being this morning’s release of the Bank of England’s minutes for November’s meeting. No big market surprises here following the quarterly inflation report last week. Vote of 8:1 for no change to QE and 9:0 to hold interest rates, virtually no impact on the value of GBP so far. In Europe the rumble of debt crisis continues with a failure to agree on a deal to give Greece the next tranche of its financial bailout this morning, with a pledge to meet again next Monday. Greece is waiting on around £25billion in aid which was suspended in the summer over concerns it was not meeting the conditions of its bailout programme. Again market data for this week is sparse for the Euro zone with German producer prices coming in f...

This is certainly an interesting time for potential buyers of Spanish property, who can find bargains wherever they care to look. For the British, the exchange rate is also favourable as Sterling has risen to relatively new highs against the Euro, thus providing them with far greater purchasing power than even one year ago. Interest there is and we have seen a huge increase in the number of daily enquiries but that is now converting into sales, with recent figures from the National Statistics Institute yesterday confirming that for the second consecutive month, home sales rose, this time by 0.9% compared with the month of September 2011. The year-on-year rise in housing purchases recorded in September is the second consecutive increase, after August registered an increase of 3% year-on-year after a negative run of 17 months of declining home sales. Needless to say during that period of declining sales, house prices have fallen dramatically. And in fact they have fallen so dramatica...