The Red Houses

We were at our Bank branch recently and while the lady of the villa did her banking business, I looked at the local properties for sale. The bank have a list of repossessed properties in the Branch.
Lo and behold, what did I see? But the houses in the next urbanisation for sale, not one house but up to a dozen.
It seems the Bank, imprudently, gave a loan of about 1.2 million euros to an ‘entrepreneur’ so that he could buy the properties off plan. The recession came and the entrepreneur walked away leaving the bank holding the properties.
180,000 euros is the asking price per villa, it is a no goer. 100,00 euros is more like it. Someone, presumably the bank, will take a hit.

Urbanisation Debt

Our Urbanisation, like all those in Spain have to have by law a Committee. One of their tasks is to set a local tax to pay for urbanisation services, electricity, maintenance, community pool etc.
Our urbanisation has set a levy of 300 Eros a year, this has not changed for the 5 years the urbanisation has been in existence. However, villa owners are failing to pay, for whatever reason and their debt to the community is now 16,500 euros.
Time for the Bailiffs me thinks!

Foreclosures in Spain

As a member of our Urbanisation committee, we have just been informed that two more owners of properties on the Urbanisation are having the properties siezed by the banks for non payment of mortgages.This takes the total to 5. It made me look into this a little bit more.
An estimated 1.4 million people in Spain are facing potential foreclosure proceedings, according to Spain’s consumer protection association, known as the Adicae.
Recent figures from the courts show that the numbers are rising fast. In 2007, there were just 26,000 foreclosures. Last year, there were more than 93,000. Early indications suggest that they will be higher again in 2010.
A recent Standard & Poor’s report found that 8 per cent of Spain’s housing is now worth less than the value of the mortgage, and with prices continuing to fall, experts believe, that figure could rise to 20 per cent.

Villa Next Door

The Villa next door to ours has been purchased, it was actually the one we wanted, by a Danish speculator. It has never been lived in and is no looking very sad.

The pool has been vadalised and the filters and pumps stolen as no securty wall was built. We had to empty the pool as the water became stagnant. The water in it is from rain water. We will have to empty that soon.
The Danish guy pays his community fees and we presume his mortgage. I will send these photos and others to him and hope he will sort it out.

Spanish Council Business

As part of the duties of being on the committee of the urbanisation we live on, is making sure that the council know about problems in and around the urbanisation.
This mostly covers, lighting, road maintenance, rubbish collection etc. In the recent past all this has taken is a trip down to the Town Hall and a chat in part Spanish, part English with the appropriate department and usually, after two trips, the work is completed.
Now things have changed. As part of the Spanish austerity measures the council staff have had a 5% reduction in salary. Harsh but…. Now the staff are fighting back, instead of talking and getting things done a form has too be completed in Spanish for every work item. Even if the work is to be done on a regular basis.
Ok if you are Spanish but not if you are English, German, French etc. It is costing the urbanisation each time to have the form completed in Spanish. We keep a copy each time as the work at the moment is never ever done!
W have a season ticket for each department at the minute!

McMillan Nurse’s Coffee Morning

The urbanisation is holding a Coffee Morning on the 11^th September 2010 11am – 1pm in the play area by the main pool to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support.
This is part of the World's Biggest Coffee Morning being held by Macmillan Cancer Support see www.macmillan.org.uk/Fundraising/WorldsBiggestCoffeeMorning for more details.
We have invited everyone from the urbanisation to attend. I will let you know how it goes.

Achtung Baby!

I was busy yesterday, doing urbanisation committee things, so I could not write this till today. The day before the semi final between Germany and Spain. The villa opposite was suddenly occupied by Germans. They immediately stated their intentions.
 
They raised the Fussball flag at the top of the stairs and claimed it for Germany. Nobody on the urbanisation is Spanish, but, they got a few looks from the Brits. All in good fun.

Here is the flag in close up. However, it does not fly proudly after last nights defeat it has been folded up ready for the next World Cup!

Thats two semi finals called correctly!