24 July 2013: While Spain’s economic outlook remains poor, with 25%+ unemployment and a continuing recession, property prices are now at a much more realistic level than during the boom years and buyers, particularly those who can do without a Spanish mortgage, have begun to return to the Costa Brava.
The area around Platja d’Aro is particularly popular at the moment and the town this year gives the impression of reliving the good old times. But, if you’ve decided to explore the area for a holiday home, this article takes a look at what kind of service Costa Brava estate agents actually deliver.
Having bought three years ago the economic situation remains pretty much the same, and it is arguable that those estate agents still in business have been further stretched due to continuing low levels of sales; there is still no boom in property.
Three years ago the majority of estate agents in the area were next to useless. We spoke to a number of different companies and, time and time again, they failed to show us the types of property we were actually looking for and almost never followed up. Even when we told them exactly what we wanted, even when they had not sold a single property for months, almost all of them failed to get back to us after the initial viewing.
Costa Brava estate agents are order takers
The reason for this, I think, is quite simple; many estate agents set themselves up back in the boom years in the first few years of the century when selling property was easy owing to massive demand and a willingness to take on huge amounts of debt to pay for it. The result?
These newly founded estate agents never really learned how to sell the properties on their books and they became nothing more than order takers. They never learned that in a downturn you need to listen to what prospective clients are actually looking for, find those types of properties and show them. And you need to make sure you follow up and continue to do so until they buy.
Instead, time and time again, we would be shown properties that in no way matched our requirements. We went out of our way to explain what we wanted, and each time the agent would assure us that they would get back to us.
The problem is that they never did, or as in one agent who told us he had 200 properties on his books and hadn’t made a sale for 2 years, contact us months later after we finally did buy a house. Eventually though we did find an agent who worked with us until we found a house that we liked and here we are, three years later.
Find your dream Costa Brava property
If you have specific requirements for property on the Costa Brava and you would like to be introduced to a reliable estate agent who will help find your dream home then please contact us.
We’ll get back to you shortly to arrange liaising with you and local estate agents to find exactly the house or apartment you are looking for.
