Take the landscape of the of the Spanish real estate agency back just eight years ago and you have a very different story than what we have now. Back in 1999 buyers were flocking to the Costa Del Sol in their thousands to get a piece of what seemed to be the hottest property on the planet. Whether it was for investment or a chance for northern Europeans to get a place in the never ending sunshine, properties were being sold in great numbers on a daily basis. Buyers, who were often initially briefed in high end hotels throughout Europe would arrive at Malaga airport and be collected in flashy company cars for what was called an "inspection visit".
Generally after spending a full on three days of looking at property they would end up in a lawyer's office placing their deposit on their chosen piece of Spanish real estate. During that long weekend they had been into the realtors' plush offices and been taken for lunch in some of the best restaurants. Some companies even had high end office space next door to each other, as times were so good.
Then all of a sudden in 2004 the buyers stopped coming, companies whose monthly operating costs were disproportionately high suddenly realized that their position was unsustainable for much longer and therefore had to start scaling down their operations. This unfortunately meant that the clients who had bought through them previously didnīt receive the service they were initially promised, due to the severe cost cutting many of these firms had to take.
Things started to get even worse, particularly for some of the big players and for many bankruptcy was the only option. This lead to staff that had remained loyal not getting paid and a series of corruption cases further damaged the reputation of the area and the industry as a whole.
Here we are now coming to the end of 2009 and there is virtually nothing left of those big companies, or if they are still surviving it is on an almost unrecognizable scale. There are only a few attendees from the Costa at some of the main exhibitions held and the hotel shows donīt exist any more.
Now it is far lower key and the massive offices that housed these agencies either lay empty or are occupied by some unrelated industry. The survivors are the firms who understood and embraced change in the market and also smaller carefully run firms who always kept their eye on the ball.
There are people coming back to the coast looking to buy, but it is all on their terms and the majority of them only want something that they view as a bargain. This is how the property market is worldwide, things just seem a little more polarized here because of the steep peak of prices that were seen at the height of the boom. Agencies here have learnt the hard way and will be stronger because of what they have been through.
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