The El Hierro bank of CajaSiete has allowed several of its customers to take a break from repaying their debts. In a bid to make it easier for some of their harder hits customers the bank have suspended taking the repayments from clients accounts.
This favor has only been granted to clients that especially need a little assistance.
Issue 68 of the Canary Island property magazine ‘Freedom4sale’ sees a resized and redesigned mag.
The new size is a little smaller with more pages, articles, news and bargain Canary Island properties for sale. The latest issue has a different property section for main islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. You can download your own free copy of this Canary Island property magazine in pdf format.
New resized and designed magazine
Canary island property magazine Autumn 2011 edition
The Autumn 2011 issue of the Canary Islands property magazine, Freedom4sale, is out now. Issue 66 covers property for sale and rent on the islands of Lanzarote, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura.
In this issue there is property news on pages 5 and 6. Useful articles giving advice to any one thinking about buying or selling a home in this part of Spain.
The free magazine is broken down into sections representing each of the main islands. In each section there are estate agent adverts, property examples, and articles.
You can download or order your free issue of this Canary Island property magazine on the website.
There are over 10,000 properties for sale on the freedom4sale.com web site. This is the single largest up to date collection of houses to buy and sell for the Canaries. Deal directly with the estate agents selling each property.
Tourist numbers visiting Lanzarote from the rest of Europe have gone up by nineteen percent in 2011. It seems that the amount of of people looking to find cheap flights to Lanzarote will increase now. The recession mentality that has been haunting the tourist sector is finally waning.
Hotels in Spain and the Canary Islands are taking on 60,000 more seasonal staff in anticipation for a big summer in 2011. This will add up to a total of 290,000 extra summer employees.
Issue 65 of Freedom4sale property magazine
The late summer issue of the Canary Island property magazine
Freedom4sale is now available for free download at the freedom4sale.com/magazine web site.
The magazine covers and freatures property for sale in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Tenerife and Gran Canaria from English speaking estate agents.
There are sections in the magazine for each island with agent featured properties, articles and bargain homes for sale and rent.
Visit the web site regularly to stay up dated with the largest selection of Canary Island property to be found anywhere.
Spain’s unemployment figures have received some good news. The first third of the year has seen the creation of 7,000 new jobs throughout Spain by the tourism sector. This may rise to 30,000 new jobs according to Jose Luis Zoreda, vice president of Exceltur.
A lot of this growth is seen as being a pass on effect from geopolitical problems experienced by competing destinations in other parts of Europe.
The Canary Islands have seen the strongest unemployment decrease in this sector, mainly in Gran Canaria and Tenerife.
The twelve month a year holiday destination of Lanzarote receives the vast majority of its visitors by air. Even though this beautiful volcanic island is in Europe when you look on a map it does not seem like it. Lanzarote is located over one thousand six hundred miles from London. This distance means aeroplane fuel costs are expensive. Higher fuel prices mean more expensive ticket costs. Finding cheap flights to Lanzarote is possible but it just take a little know how.
The mega budget ticket prices that mainland Spain destinations like the Costa del Sol cannot be offered to tourists bound for Lanzarote. The extra air miles means much higher costs.
The best way to research ticket prices in online. There are several very well known budget travel airlines that offer cut price flights but beware the hidden extras. Do your research well and learn all you can.
More and more flight companies are offering reduced price flights to Lanzarote. As the competition for flying tourists to Lanzarote increases then the prices reduce.
There are a whole host of flight comparison web sites around now, these are good for guide prices but going direct to the airline often saves you money. Your best plan is to type into search engines ‘Cheap flights Lanzarote’ and click on the actual airlines web sites. Make some test searches and see how the prices compare. Booking well in advance often saves money especially if you need to travel in high season when prices tend to soar.
Our new villa in Playa Blanca
We are Simon, Marilyn & Carla Slater, aged 46, 47 and 13 respectively. Simon is a business owner and I work as a part time administrator in a Nursing Home and Carla is currently at secondary school. We live in a lovely small village in rural Cheshire and enjoy a happy life with a good circle of friends and family.
Simon first visited Lanzarote in 1974 and obviously there have been significant changes since then, however the thing we love about Lanzarote is that it maintains a lovely family feel and obviously due to building restrictions has managed to avoid becoming a “concrete jungle”. As a family, we first came to the resort of Matagorda about 10 years ago and have been frequent Visitors ever since. We have stayed in all the main resorts on the island but we were drawn to Playa Blanca because of its family feel, lovely beaches and fantastic selection of villas available to rent.
We originally thought about buying property in Lanzarote about 8 years ago and did find a villa in Tias which we were very interested in. However, after a great deal of soul searching we decided to let it go and move house in the UK instead. Since then, we have always kept an eye on the property market to see how things were developing as we were still committed at some point in our lives to buying over here and especially in Playa Blanca, which has certainly seen a lot of properties being built over the last 10 years. So, we continued to holiday in Lanzarote a couple of times a year and always in the winter months as this proved to be a great tonic from the UK winters.
With good fortune favouring us in 2010, we were able to release some equity in one of Simon’s businesses and after doing a small amount of research on property prices, we decided to move forward in our long term goal to buy a property in Lanzarote. Fortunately, as we had surplus money, we were in a great position to purchase the villa outright which also meant we could move quickly without having to arrange a mortgage. We flew out to Lanzarote at Easter 2010 and made arrangements with 3 different Agents to show us around properties that we liked the look of from various internet sites and also given our budget and requirements, any properties which they thought may be suitable.
We were interested in at least a 3 bedroom villa for sale in Playa Blanca with private pool. Located too far from amenities for a budget of around e350k (preferably less !). We looked at around a dozen villas over the first couple of days and did not see anything that really excited us and we were feeling a little down beat by this time. On our last day we had viewings booked with Margaret from Optima Estate and the day started as the previous days had left off – some nice properties but nothing we really fancied. This all changed when Margaret drove us to the Parque Del Rey estate, which we instantly liked as it was a beautifully maintained complex that residents obviously took a great deal of pride in. Firstly, she showed us a compact 4 bedroom villa which we were very keen on but we had slight concerns about the privacy of the pool as it was at the front of the property, so Margaret then took us to a wonderful large villa at the top of the small estate – we fell in love with it instantly! Needless to say it was the most expensive property we had looked at all weekend but it had the wow factor – a fantastic glass atrium, huge en-suite bathroom with massive Jacuzzi bath and fantastic lay out on a massive private plot. We are impulsive people and apart from taking a trial walk down to the main street from the villa to check out how long it would take (12 mins by the way!) we were certain the property was for us after only a 10 minute viewing.
We returned home the next day and began to work through our finances and spend some time researching buying procedures and within a couple of weeks we were able to make a cash offer on the villa, for a lower price than the asking price of e370k, which was accepted. During this period, Margaret was in regular contact with us and was able to recommend Lawyers ASG Interconsulting who proved to be speedy, efficient and very competitive. We never had any worries about purchasing our villa as through the entire process Margaret was a wealth of knowledge and always had the answers for us, if not immediately, then she was always prompt in replying. The majority of processes took place via email and ASG were even able to set up all the utility contracts for us, which was a massive help as we have limited knowledge of the Spanish language!
From our offer being accepted in mid May 2010, we flew over to complete the purchase on 22/06/2010, and spent the night before completion in what would become our Villa the following day – it seemed very strange but we definitely felt more excited than ever, as we had only seen it once before. The day before signing Margaret arranged a meeting for me with ASG Interconsulting at their Playa Blanca offices, this was very beneficial as they talked me through the whole procedure which would take place at the Notary’s office the following day, and explained that at some points there could be as many as 8 people present and explained who they would be and this really alleviated any anxieties we had.
On the day of signing Sonia from Optima accompanied us to oversee the smooth running of events and once we had signed we then went for a lovely celebratory lunch. We called back at Optima’s office to thank Margaret and Sonia for all their hard work, only to find that in our absence Margaret had arranged a locksmith to change all the locks on the villa (it had previously been a rental property and she was concerned over who may have keys) and also for a local lady to call round before our trip home that evening to arrange building / contents insurance (this had slipped our minds). Once again, Margaret had gone the extra mile.
The total villa cost were agreed and the fees to ASG Interconsulting were e1,250 plus 6.50% taxes of the villa cost (as mentioned, they arranged utility bills for us, community charges and registered the title deed for us). We were extremely fortunate in that we originally made an offer on the villa when the exchange rate was 1.05 euros in the pound and at the time of completion it stood at 1.21, this saved us in the region of £42,000 which I am sure you will agree makes the villa a fantastic buy.
Since purchasing the villa, we have undertaken some building works including a great new patio extension, new garden wall, a larger water heater as well as a 4th bedroom being built and furnished in the same materials as the existing rooms. This work was project managed by Margaret and when we came out in October it was fully completed despite only being started mid September and all to a very high standard and at a very competitive price – the workman would definitely give any British builder a run for their money.
We have been out to Casa Carla about 8 times over the last year, quite often for 4 day breaks which have proven to very enjoyable and actually feeling as though we have been there longer than that. Luckily, being based in Cheshire we can fly from both Manchester and Liverpool airports and have booked some great deals as low at £84.00 return trip. Another thing which we have enjoyed was visiting Lanzarote during the summer as I mentioned previously we have only ever been during winter and it has been lovely to enjoy the warm sunny evenings with bbq’s and chilled wine – we definitely feel we are living the dream ! Most of our trips include numerous visits to the local furniture / hardware stores as we have continued to repair and replace items around the villa and to ensure that it is of the highest standard for visiting guests and we have also now included free Wi-Fi and Sky TV which we feel is a great asset to our property.
At present we rent the villa through Optima Villas and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Our long term plan is to eventually move out to Playa Blanca within the next 10 years and enjoy what we hope will be a long and happy retirement for us. Simon is a keen fisherman and has a boat moored at Conwy Marina in North Wales and his hope would be to sell that and to buy a new boat and moor it in Rubicon Marina when we will be able to spend many fun times at sea with family and friends.
Our whole experience of buying in Lanzarote has been completely stress free and we never at any time had any doubts that we were making the right decision. We are delighted with our villa and take great pride in showing it to visiting friends and family – we have never been so popular!
