Anyone who has lived in Spain for a few years will remember the heady days when you waltzed in to any well known Spanish bank and said “I am thinking of buying property, can I have a mortgage” answer was always
SPANISH MORTGAGE MARKET CHERRY PICKS DEAD CERTS

The Spanish mortgage market has been up and down like a proverbial fiddler´s elbow over the past few years but news came to me yesterday which makes me think that buying property is not at the top of most bank´s wish list when looking for new business.

Anyone who has lived in Spain for a few years will remember the heady days when you waltzed in to any well known Spanish bank and said “I am thinking of buying property, can I have a mortgage” answer was always “how much do you want”.  The required papers for the transaction were minimal and so long as you had one head and two eyes equidistantly placed you were guaranteed the deal would be done and dusted within 4 weeks.  Not only would they lend you whatever you wanted, they actively engaged in foisting more money on to you than you needed.  I had a very interesting conversation with my bank managed when I decided to buy an apartment in Cadiz City.  He said “how much do you want” I told him and he looked almost hurt.  He said “but that is only 80% of the price of the house and the taxes, don´t you want more”  I said “what for, I am only buying property in Cadiz City not half of the Costa de la Luz” and he said, “don´t you fancy a holiday or a new car or something”.

Sadly it would appear that a bank manager  of the breed who not only wanted to finance your house purchase, your social life and your outward displays of affluence  is a breed unlikely to be seen again in the near future.  If you can remember far enough back,  before the world crashed into the financial abyss it now appears to be languishing in, I am taking about the days when you changed your car like your underwear and competed with a Times travel columnist to have more holidays than any of your friends and associates in the same year.  Buying property was a run of the mill event, you looked for a house, you got a mortgage, you worked to pay it – job done.  Apparently it does  not work like that now there is a whole under current of banks sculpting the home owner market to what gives them greatest security not what sells houses and puts decent ordinary people on the home owner ladder.

Life has hit the hard bed rock of reality and when that happens it is the little people who tend to get squished.  I had a couple of clients the other day.  Young Spanish couple, two kids under 5 years old, they have been in rented accommodation and living with their parents since they got married and have managed to save up the deposit for their first family home.  Now normally people start house hunting before they go to the bank.  Not these sharp cookies, they spoke to their bank 5 weeks ago to suss out what the monthly  repayments would be and therefore what they could afford to spend.  They showed all their personal papers and were told how much the bank would loan them based on their income.  They went house hunting and found a nice little property on our website.  Back they went to the bank to make the arrangements,  only to be told that the bank could still give them the mortgage but not at the rate they had offered 5 weeks ago.  The new rate was so much higher that they would not have been able to make the repayments.

They phoned me to ask what they could do,  so I told them to go along the road to another bank who have always been good with our clients.  They called half an hour later to say that the rate offered was much better but because they were not existing clients the bank would only give them 80% of the house purchase price without the taxes.  Effectively they had to put in 20% of the house price plus another 10/12% on top to pay the tax.

How many young couples do you know who have 31/32% of their first house purchase put by and  ready to go.  If that had been the case when I bought my first property I would still be living with my parents.  I remember my fiancé and I  foregoing a holiday, nights out and new clothes plus putting all our bonuses and spare cash away for a year to get 5% together.

The whole thing rang alarm bells.  So I trotted off for a coffee with my friend from the bank to see what the inside story was.  “Well” he said, “the banks don´t want to lend on property due to the downturn.   They are designing the mortgage packages to cherry pick prime clients.  They want to ensure the deal is low risk and the clients have a good lump of their cash in the pot to prevent any chance of defaulting on the loan and leaving the bank with a house in negative equity.  At one time you were guaranteed 80/90% of the valuation of the property.    Now they will only give you 80% of the actual purchase price no matter whether it surveys way over the asking price and no lending to cover taxes”.  So it would appear that your average high street Spanish banks are purveyors of umbrellas so long as it is not raining but when the droplets start to fall – forget it.

So much for the Government´s  instructions to the banks that they must recommence mortgage lending.  They obviously forgot to add “but not at rates and with conditions which cut out all but the most prime borrowers”.  So if you are anywhere between 18 and 30 and do not have a pot of money then forget it and keep lodging with your mum, at least she will do your washing and you can be assured of a hot meal when you get home from work …….. it sounds pretty idyllic actually.

Birds build nests and humans, since they learned to bend a few twigs and cover them in cow waste, have built houses.  A house is the single most important item to any human being, whether it be a thatched shack on stilts in the Indian Ocean or a stone built mansion, we all need one and we all aspire to a better one than we have.  We feel safe as a child when we are at home,  when we meet the right mate our first thought is to find a home, when the children arrive we are content when they are in bed and safe in our home and as we get older we feel content and settled in our home.

Our home does not just provide shelter it provides a deep sense of belonging and a sense of something we know and trust,  something that we can come back to and be at peace in.  No matter what befalls you during the day when you get home and shut the door you feel  a certain sense of security, that nobody and nothing can get to you and that you are in your own space.

Helping someone buy property that does all these things I consider to be an honour and a responsibility.  Your home is the largest single investment you will probably make in your life so it is vital that you get the right one.  The one that suits you and that you feel at peace in.

So, I opened Cadizcasa Estate Agents because I believed that the job could be done better.  Having bought and sold properties of my own in the past I was always a bit let down by the service on offer.  It seemed that the people were more interested in getting sales than in providing the right product for their customer´s needs.  This seemed a bit odd to me as you would not sell someone a suit that didn´t fit them because one look in the mirror would give away the baggy shoulders,  but with a house it can take a long time before the wrong choice comes to light. The service on the other side didn´t seem right either. You put your house up for sale with an agent and then they brought you loads of clients who wanted something different to what you were selling.  The excuse was always “we thought when they saw it they might like it”.  All this tropospheric scatter approach did was wear out your nerves and your carpets.

I wanted to give people the kind of service when buying property that I expected, patience, straight forward advice and no sales tricks.  Selling houses is not rocket science, your job is not to push people in to buying what you want them to buy or what brings you the most profit, your job is to chaperon them and let them find what they are looking for.  We all know instinctively when we are in the right place and all an Estate Agent should do is read the client, take them to what they think is the right place and then let the clients do the rest.  By all means give some advice when required but never try to manipulate or push.

Perhaps I could have been a millionaire by now like so many others I have known over the years by pushing or manipulating but I did not have to grab a British Airways or Lufthansa flight back to my own country and shut my Facebook account to stop people finding me.  I still live on the Costa de la Luz the area of Spain I consider to be my home. Many of my clients are now friends and I love to meet them and see their families growing.  I don´t have to run for cover when I see them walking up the street in Chiclana de la Frontera and if I did then I would know that I had failed in doing my job.

I came to the Costa de la Luz to start a new life, to have an adventure with my husband,  which we could both share and which would last a lifetime.  Within days  of arriving I felt at home in Spain.  I liked the people.   To the Spanish a shovel is a shovel, nothing more and nothing less, you are judged on your personal qualities not your wealth and you make time for human beings.  Life in Britain was rushing by so fast I found that I did not have time to spend with people, not even time to say hello, how are you, how are the kids and the sad fact is that now I do take those few precious minutes which mean so much to the other person and I still achieve as much and I don´t carry the guilt burden of having had to rush by someone that I knew I should have spent a little time with.

Every day for me in the Costa de la Luz is an adventure, I love shopping at the indoor market in Chiclana and listening to the day’s news as related by the locals.  I love sitting by the sea with a glass of wine and watching the sun go down, I love walking in the streets and smelling the onions and garlic as women prepare the midday meal for the family and most of all I love the feeling of belonging and being at peace with where I now live and being an estate agent has made that possible for me.

At this moment in time I cannot ever imagine being anywhere else than right here in Chiclana doing what I love – being an Estate Agent.

I have heard horror stories of people sitting in official offices with someone keeping watch at the door while large brown envelopes of money were counted and exchanged, like some clandestine exchange of government secrets by two characters from a cheap spy thriller.  They don´t have unmarked drops in secluded woods  or write messages in invisible ink but it is pretty cloak and dagger and certainly not something to be discussed at a polite gathering.

Black money is not an invention of the Spanish and hard cash is common currency in countries which have experienced civil unrest or civil war in living memory.    People like to have a bit of cash on hand  “just in case”.   If you need to pack up and move in a hurry then cash is good.  You are not going to end up with your life savings stuck in a bank where you cannot access it, just as you need to leave the country.  Likewise, some cash can smooth your journey as you flee an area or country.  Crossing palms with silver could mean the difference between survival and death. When the crisis is over the desire to be in control of your money stays and people prefer to have a mattress full of bank notes than a cheque book or credit card.

A distrust of government and a dislike of banks also plays a part.  The Spanish do not like the thought that your money is somewhere that the government can keep their eyes on it or in the hands of some organisation who might do something silly with your hard earned shekels.  Perhaps we in the UK should have been more cautious about giving the banks free reign with our wealth!!
The downside to black money is that you can never use it legitimately.  You cannot buy investments with it as the government will wonder where you got this sudden wealth from and you cannot use it to pay the mortgage of domestic bills if times get tough.  I once asked a bank manager friend what you could do with this dodgy currency and he said buy a car, buy a boat or go a holiday.  Fine if you fancy any of those options but tough if you are suddenly made redundant and need to draw on your savings to get by.

The problem  with black money is being the last in the chain.  The practise is dying out and will one day gasp its final breath and then anyone who paid black money when buying property will be stuck with the big bill because they will have to declare the full value of the property on the paperwork and pay up accordingly, so think carefully before you get involved with the practise.  It is not legal and you may end up being the Patsy.