Comment on the latest Spanish property market report
Property dispatches published an email from a reader describing their own view of the property situation in the costas in Spain
I read your report on the Spanish property market and found it very lucid and full of wisdom. I bought my first property in Spain in Tenerife in 1983 and have seen a few ups and downs in the market since then. Never more grim than I see it now. I can’t begin to offer you further analysis on your easy to read and perceptive tome but for my part would comment as follows:
The boom in development in the ‘costas’ is in the main driven by greed. There is little consideration for green areas nor the provision of parking. What has amazed me in a new town such as Las Americas in southern Tenerife is that it is basically only around 30 years old. Licences have been granted for some pretty dense development and yet the majority of the properties 10 years old or more have no or little provision for parking. It would have been so sensible to say to a developer, ?OK, you can build it but we want one car space for every apartment and two for every larger property!?
You can add to this scenario the chaos caused when supplies are delivered to shops and restaurants and double-parking, inconsiderate parking and illegal parking combine to make it hell for road users and particularly for the van driver. I watch in amazement as deliveries are made with sack barrows with which their owners have to contend flights of steps, parked cars and pedestrians to get their wares to their destination. This assists in the damage to pavements that once looked so good but rapidly deteriorate and add to the gloom of high-rise and intensive development equally deteriorating due to lack of maintenance. This lack of essential maintenance can only worsen with the slump now upon us.
