People were looking for ways to keep their nest egg safe for the future and many believed there was nothing safer than bricks and mortar, especially bricks and mortar with some sun thrown in. Why did they choose Spain? Well, there were three main choices at the time, France but the weather was not so good and property prices were higher, Italy but the bureaucracy was enough to put most off and good old Spain where it was easy to buy, the Spanish were very welcoming and without much effort you could make a very nice little life for yourself and live off your pensions when the time came.

Added to the heady mix were programmes about foreign travel. We all remember Judith Chalmers on Wish You Were Here and even the most staunch couch potato found it difficult not to pick up a travel brochure after Miss Chalmers had visited and by her presence endorsed the country. Even the traditional Sunday papers started to add travel supplements to their usual offering and new magazines specialising in overseas travel and investment started to appear on the news agent shelves. Our love of all things foreign was fuelled by Floyd on the Med showing us around Spain and making us think this was the place to be.

On a more mundane but nonetheless important level, the exchange rates were excellent and you could buy a property off plan and sell it on the day it was completed for a good profit. The tax rules also were more favourable then and many made a bit of cash just buying and selling new properties.

We had the desire to do it and we were being told at every turn that we were doing the right thing so it is no surprise that so many people invested in buying a Spanish property. Whether you wanted it to live in it or just use it for holidays it made sense in those days to put your hard earned cash into some bricks and mortar in a country you thought you knew.

All went along swimmingly for about 10 years and then there was an almighty bang! The bubble which had become more inflated than a pregnant whale´s belly, popped and we all landed in a pile of brown sticky stuff.

Why did it go bang? Quite simply the world turned upside down and people got the jitters. Our economy took a bashing and our exchange rates plummeted. The terror attacks in America and the UK meant that people were not so keen to travel and suddenly they started to remember that foreign counties, even the ones we knew and loved were just that – foreign. They wondered where the terror threat would end, how it would affect the economy etc. The financial pressure changed how people thought and all of a sudden they were more concerned with keeping their jobs and paying the mortgage on the house they lived in than buying foreign property. We went from being a county of spenders to a country of savers something which had not really been seen since the second world war.

The market for overseas property plummeted accordingly and the glut of properties already built lost their value over night due that basic economic thing called supply and demand. When you have lots of the first and none of the second the thing that gives is the price. Prices tumbled and negative equity soon came in to being to a level never seen before in Spain. What should have been a sound investment turned in to a bad investment which will take several years to regain its true market value and a large amount of patience and nerve is required to get us through these difficult market conditions.

The moral of this story – no matter how good things are always remember that they can change overnight so be prepared for anything.