(PRWEB) September 24, 2008 — TheMoveChannel.com, the leading international property portal, announces a number of new Costa del Sol property developments or properties for sale, including:

- Aged 55 + development (Secure environment, 2 beds, 2 baths, full sports facilities, £218,940)
- 3 bedroom Penthouse (Exclusive development, 86 apartments in the development, £1,990,360)

Properties in Spain may not be an investment opportunity UK investors have considered of late due to the credit crunch. One of the most visited areas in Europe; the Costa del Sol is famous for its sun, fun and fabulous beaches. We take a look at a few of them to see what all the fuss is about.

How To Travel

The three airports that service the Costa del Sol are Seville, Gibraltar and the main airport, Málaga; all have regular cheap flights from London and other popular European cities.

Málaga is the busiest and most central of the airports and is situated between Málaga City and the large resort of Torremolinos on the national road N340, which connects all towns and resorts along the coast. Trains can be caught from the airport into Málaga City and to Fuengirola and bus services link the coastal towns as well as the inland towns of Ronda and Granada.

Nikki Beach (Marbella) is an exclusive beach used by the rich and famous, as well as the wannabe crowd. But don’t be put off, as this beach is lovely, blessed with exotic bamboo beds, alcoves of tee-pees and gently swaying palms.

As the sun begins to set things take a slightly different turn as the music starts to increase in volume and the party on the beach really starts to get underway.

Here’s a conversation with an English Spanish lawyer on property dealingsLawyer discusses property in Spain in spain

Des Sparkes answers various topical issues and has to be worth a listen.
How much did your last visit to a lawyer cost?

Here are some of the issues:
How can I stop my property being grabbed back by the authorities?
How can I know for sure I am dealing with a fully qualified lawyer?
How do I avoid all the sales pressure and take time to make my decision?
Are there things I should watch out for when I go on an inspection trip?

Des recently took part in a BBC program so we thought you’d like the benefit of
some of his knowledge.
Des is available at www.sparkeslawyers.com

Tags: lawyer, property, spanish

High interest rates have hit the property and construction sectors in Spain [GALLO/GETTY]  As unemployment rates soar and the property and construction sectors decline, Al Jazeera reports on the Spanish government’s new $15bn stimulus scheme.     As the first US-style fiscal package to be adopted by a European government, the plan is a clear indication of how worried Spain is about its economy.   The downturn comes after years of economic boom, particularly in the property and construction sectors, which have proved vulnerable in the current global credit crisis.   María Dolores Alfonso, an economics professor at Seville University, said that Spaniards are now facing up to the crisis.   “From not even figuring in people’s conversations a few months ago, it’s now the star topic that you hear everywhere,” she said.   “We are definitely in a crisis, you see it, you feel it, you breathe it.”   Job losses   The property and construction sectors have been hit the hardest by high interest rates, Alfonso said.   Spain’s construction boom was financed by borrowing from the banks.   The credit crunch has forced the country’s biggest property companies into renegotiating billions of dollars worth of debts.   Carlos Paneque, an architect from Seville,  has had to lay off several employees Carlos Paneque, an architect from Seville, recently had to lay off several employees.   “What might make this crisis worse now is that we were in such a boom period when the recession hit, but construction always has cyclical periods of growth then loss, it will recuperate,” he told Al Jazeera.   Meanwhile, tens of thousands of property agents have also been shut down.   And many of the thousands of building sites across Spain and along the Spanish coast now lay dormant, with no indication of when they might start up again.   Cheap labour   What has made the crisis all the worse is how the property downturn is being coupled with the loss of much of Spain’s manufacturing industry.   In the southern city of Cadiz, factory bosses are moving operations across the straits of Morocco to take advantage of cheaper labour.   Braulio Martinez works for one of Spain’s biggest unions, UGT, in the bay of Cadiz, and has been dealing with the fallout of the closure of the Delphi factory, which made car parts for its US owners.   He said: “The news was a massive blow with no explanation, and we were left asking ourselves about where our dignity was after giving so much of our lives to this factory.”   Martinez and the former Delphi workers have been working with the government to implement a plan to attract potential investors in the bay.   Some companies have taken the bait but they are yet to move in.   It looks like by the time they do, many of Martinez’s members will have been unemployed for years.   They already say their children are leaving the area and are more hopeful of finding work elsewhere.

Tags: spanish, property

Gross domestic product (GDP) will expand 2.3 percent in both 2008 and 2009 instead of the previously predicted 3.1 percent and 3.0 percent, Economy Minister Pedro Solbes told a news conference.

“The adjustment in the property sector is proving to be more intense than what we initially predicted,” he said.

The slowing economy will be accompanied by a rise in the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent in 2008 and 10 percent by the end of 2009 compared from 8.3 percent last year, the government predicted.

Earlier on Friday, national statistics office INE said the number of jobless rose by 246,000 or 13 percent in the first quarter to 2.1 million people, its biggest jump it 15 years.

That put the unemployment rate in the first quarter at a 3-year high of 9.6 percent, up from 8.6 percent in the previous three months.

That put the unemployment rate in the first quarter at a 3-year high of 9.6 percent, up from 8.6 percent in the previous three months.

“Spain is really in a dire situation right now,” Bank of America economist Gilles Moec told AFP, noting the country also accounts for 12 percent of the eurozone economy.

“Spain is really turning down very fast, faster than what we anticipated and its not just the construction sector which is doing badly,” he said.

Spain has led job creation in Europe in recent years with the jobless rate hitting 7.95 percent in the second quarter of 2007, its lowest level since 1978.

But the jobless started to rise late last year as the key building sector was hurt by rising interest rates and the international lending crunch, putting the brakes on a decade-long credit-fueled expansion.

Many of the newly jobless in the construction sector are immigrants who moved to Spain from Latin America and eastern Europe in recent years, drawn by the property boom.

“Spain is perhaps one of the most worrying cases of all in the euro zone at the moment,” Howard Archer, chief economist at Global Insight in London, told AFP.

Last week, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist government, re-elected in a March general election, approved a two-year 18-billion-euro (28.5-billion-dollar) economic stimulus package.

The government says the package of tax rebates and public works spending will be paid for by dipping into the government’s surplus which Solbes said it hoped to maintain in 2008.

Tags: spain, property