Whats New

With many Spanish Estate Agents find the going tough as we head into the spring market, traditionally a high point in property sales expectations, many spanish agents are supplementing their income with managing villa rentals while the sales market flounders.

The Spanish Property MLS has even supplemented its portfolio to include a specialist site for villa rentals in Spain to aid the smaller agents gain exposure on the internet for rental properties that they manage. The villa rentals site is also open to owners direct with full management functions alongside the video facilities that AMLA integrated for its MLS sales site.

With exposure a week after launch already being established for keyword searches such as villa rentals spain, the mls hopes to attract renters in numbers. 

AMLASpain, The Spanish Property MLS, has said that its goal for 2008 is to achieve authority status on google for Spanish Property. Having added in the last two months a Spanish Property Forum & Community forum, Video facilities for property marketing, a sub-domain for holiday & villa rentals in Spain AMLA believes it has put all the ‘cards in a row’ to achieve its aims.

‘In association with the Spanish language site AMLACasas  we hope to attract an ever-increasing share of the domestic market towards Multiple Listing. Future goals then include launching a property MLS in the UK for the UK domestic property market. We can undercut the advertisers like Rightmove by 75% and offer back-office software to boot. I think we will find customers.. 

Ouch…even that play on words was pushing the limits for me!

They are all around us… we look at them all the time…but rarely do we see them.. What am I talking about?

The advertising board…..no not the poster that we see, the actual board that its pasted onto. Alcom Aluminium is the new board on the block. Its a new composite replacement for both the dibond and multipanel boards that you see…or dont see all around us.

There is a revolution in the materials used to make these boards, outstripping the guarantees and european standards that are currently in effect. The VKD Group are the leader in this field strtch the boundaries of composite plastics.

Sitting in your armchair…cup of tea on the table next to you…warm fire, glowing in the hearth…dont you just love christmas shopping! Allneedsandwants takes away the stress of shopping…the barging , the nightmare of parking…and god forbid the crush of the sales.

The online shopping mall is I hope, here to stay and I have to cinfess I am not quite sure where all those people, who crush into the town centres in their SUVs wasting time, gas and their own patience, have been for the past…five years. 

You can search for pretty much anything, get an amazon discounter, delivery to your doorstep.

Like I said at the beginning…dont you just love the shopping season

Ok, here is a good cause posting for all those animal lovers out there…and I am one. When it comes to pets I cant keep a dry eye when you see some of the cruelty bestowed on pets by some people. So when a pet adoptions website sets up that is trying to re-home some of the misfortunate pets that have been abandoned or mis-treated …you just gotta give them a plug.

Pet Adoptions gives you a good look at the pets on offer. They have a full bio and the pictures will get you on their own.

have you seen Aspcc ad with Sarah Mccloghlin….wow…They got the sentiment right though….So support pet adoptions….well, only if your a normal sane person that loves animals and if you have space for another then give pet adoptions a look..

Go Guys….Keep up the good work

There are some great sayings in real estate. One that stays with me in times of depressed markets is that ‘a home is worth what some-one is willing to pay for it’!
So much for the valuation models that are used by the industry if this is true. The Real estate market is governed by simple supply and demand economics. In a market as large as the US this means that whilst home loans may be depressed in California, it is not necessarily the case that the market is not buoyant elsewhere.

The major factor affecting the market on a national level is the rate of information transfer and the understanding of it. Put simply…confidence has been lost in the market due to a lack of confidence, (demand) in the market due to a mis-understanding of the news reports of an isolated section of the market…the sub-prime crisis.
Equity loans are on the up as people turn to home equity loans instead of moving.

What will it take to bring back confidence? Well you can bank on the media to start the hype just as they have preached the doom and gloom. Their inability to explain a complicated issue in more than two syllables causing widespead uncertainty works for creating hope out of a 1/4 point cut in interest rates in the same way. In any event….don’t panic….it wont take long.

It’s 2008 and the New Year holds many changes for a lot of people. Moving home is one of the biggest changes you can make in life….and one of the most stressful. Home loans in the latter part of 2007 were given out much more sparingly due to the credit crunch caused by the sub-prime collapse in the mortgage market. Property prices faltered in some states and there was a general feeling that the property market bubble may have burst.

Lots of people are putting off moving home and are turning to an equity loan to make improvements or add additions to their existing homes rather than poke a toe into the homes sales market.

Home equity loans can provide a simple way of coping with that ever-increasing family or just to bump up the amenities…a new kitchen, ROTG or similar project that will put off the need to move for a year or two until the market shows signs of rising confidence

It really depends how long you’ve been around to know whether you can sit at your desk as a Real Estate Agent and kick the trash can muttering flipping houses or, if you have been around a while, you have seen the downs in a bear property market and know you just have to dig a little deeper to make the sale.
Of course a flipping houses blog isn’t a blog with sentiment, but a resource about that well known investment strategy of turning an investment over for a profit.

In this bear market it is always good to get tips on flipping houses . If fact, the more the better. Get all sides of the arguement before deciding the best way of investing in Real Estate. Bear Markets have their pitfalls but they also have their upsides. With a  falling market you will nearly always find a higher rate of foreclosure and real estate auctions are plenty.
Real Estate Investing seminars are also a good source of information. Most important though is to take a no rush perspective when investing. Do your homework and research all sides before committing.

Social networking is all about bringing people together….Facebook, Myspace
etc have all been valued recently with huge sums being bantered about in the
multi-millions. Just like the purchase of YouTube what is the valuation of these
companies based on. With You tube it was fairly obvious. 100 millions viewers
everyday is a pretty large audience for an advertising company to own….and
whatever you think, thats all Google really is….an advertising company. They
protect their market share with a ruthless disregard for competition even
slapping the hands that feed them…..the website owners, if they dare try to
share in a mythical value,(Pagerank) that Google in its wisdom has bestowed on
them. What is value anyway if it does not act as a medium of exchange…no real
value at all. Its like getting stranded on a desert island. All of a sudden a
man from Google rows buy and chucks a gold bar onto the beach…..Your rich. There
is a snag though. Yea the obvious one…and a month or so later you starve to
death. Ah…but you died a rich man….said the Googleman at your funeral when they
finally found your body and buried you.

I digress. I was making a point about social networking and their value to
businesses that are not multi-mi..billion dollar advertising companies. Well if
you cant beat them…so the saying goes….then create your own…..market that
is.

One site that is attempting something new in Business & Social networking
is amlaspain.com, The Spanish Property MLS

They recently announced the launch of a community forum to attempt to bring
local community services together with the future potential residents looking to
buy property in Spain.
Launch hot on the heels of a video site, a spanish language version and soon to
be launched villa
rental site, AMLA seem to be attempting to create a network of sites similar
to a social network within the framework of a business driven entity…the
Property MLS.

The AMLA Group who controls the Spanish Property MLS seems to be exploding! In the last few
weeks the company has launched a Video site, a Spanish language version of its
MLS - AMLA Casas, a Spanish Forum and now…if
that wasn’t enough it is set to launch a site for holiday and villa rentals in Spain.

The No.1 ranked site for Spanish Property seems to be going all out to corner
the property market in Spain. Its use of a forum to bring the Ex-Pat community
businesses together with the future residents will create the first social
networking site in the Property Industry…An interesting concept combining the
most popular type of searched site in the UK with property sales and
rentals…..could be an interesting result…..lets watch and see!