Liguria Proving Alluring to Foreigners

Competition for homes in Liguria, Tuscany and Umbria is currently fierce and is driving property prices up as homeowners search for the perfect Italian holiday home.

Apparently Germans are spending around €300,000, and 76% of British buyers are looking at property in the €300,000-€500,000 price range. However the Russian buyers are willing to spend the most, at around €900,000 for that perfect property.

Property values in the country have held up rather well during the global economic downturn, and 61% of local estate agents expect the market to get even better over the next couple of years.

Buyers are increasingly willing to pay up to €17,000 a square metre for properties in popular Ligurian towns such as Santa Margarita Ligure. This might indicate that foreign buyers are now choosing to purchase property in smaller towns and villages rather than the major cities.

The attractions of Liguria are easy to see as it has achieved a record number of Blue Flag beaches, and in fact in 2011 was awarded the most blue flags out of all the regions in Italy. The region is also bordered by the Ligurian Sea, the Alps and the Apennines and is home to the famous seaside resorts of Portofino and Cinque Terre.

This location means that it has a mild climate year-round and is pleasant to visit even in the dead of winter. Temperatures in winter time are generally between seven and 10°C, while summer temperatures tend to be between 23 and 24°C. Liguria also has the distinction of being the birthplace of pesto.

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Portuguese Property Bargains on the Way

According to a leading currency exchange firm, the election of the social Democrat government in Portugal will bring about a new era of austerity in the country which should see property prices falling even further. The coalition government in the country is due to implement the austerity package being demanded by the EU in return for their £70 million bailout.

While this might seem reasonable enough, the Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho has promised that his government will make even more cuts, with the idea being that deficit reduction targets will be met ahead of time, attracting investors back into the country. Cuts include selling off public services, higher health care costs and a reduction in unfair dismissal compensation.

It's expected that all this will have a negative effect on Portugal property prices as households will have less money to spend, but should prove attractive to foreign investors, especially those looking to buy property in popular destinations such as the Algarve.

Although Portugal has a similar deficit crisis to that of Greece and Ireland, it is slightly different in that the property market here has had very little effect on these problems. There has been far less re-mortgaging and high loan to value ratio loans available to the Portuguese, and in fact the country exhibited one of the most stable rates of loan default during the worst of the economic crisis. At the height of the boom in 2007 the non-performing loan barometer was just 4%, and this figure decreased to 3% last year.

South Africans Choosing Smaller Homes

People trying to sell South African homes currently have to discount prices by between nine and 12% in order to achieve a sale, according to Lew Geffen, chairman of Sotheby's International Realty in South Africa. He feels the most likely cause is the recent apprehension over elections, long school holidays and an increasing aversion to take on more debt.

Levels of household debt in South Africa are still at high levels, and with food, fuel and electricity costs forecast to rise, buyers are choosing not to take on such large mortgages, even if they can. The majority of South African households have an annual income of around R192K which puts them firmly into the lower income property buying market. This means they can comfortably afford homes costing up to R1.4 million.

As a result there has been increasing demand for smaller high-density housing in metropolitan areas. The affordability of homes has improved since 2007 and 2008, but people are definitely becoming more interested in keeping the costs of homeownership down, and are mindful about the prospect of interest rate rises by the end of the year.

There are also signs that banks will not lend on properties whose price is overinflated, so anyone asking an unrealistic price is less likely to achieve a sale. In general homebuyers are not particularly motivated to move at the moment, and are more likely to do so if they think they are getting a bargain. The market was bolstered to a certain extent by the effects of the 2010 FISA World Cup and the interest rate cuts late last year, but now these influences have run their course.

Moroccan Property Market has Sustainable Growth

According to CB Richard Ellis the property market in Morocco has sustainable growth for a number of years to come and the managing director, Karim Beqqali, feels the country has been successful in attracting a large amount of investment into holiday homes.

The property market in Morocco has been affected in the past by the global economic downturn, and this had a severe impact on the second home market which had previously been buoyant.

However it has been largely untouched by the recent unrest in parts of the Middle East with most analysts feeling it's far enough away to be unaffected by these problems.

Good economic growth in Morocco has resulted in a healthy local market, and a rapidly expanding middle-class is giving greater impetus not only to the residential property market but also the commercial property market.

Morocco plans to promote coastal tourism through six new coastal resorts which are collectively called the Azur Plan. These results will eventually create more than 100,000 beds of which 73,000 will be hotel beds.

The plan was implemented before the global economic crisis, and since then some international developers have had to transfer projects to local operators.

At the moment Marrakesh is the primary tourist destination in Morocco and the city has managed to attract many world-class hotel brands and has over 5.5 million overnight stays year. However the property markets within the other three major cities of Tangiers, Casablanca and Rabat have also experienced strong growth in recent years.

There are no restrictions for overseas buyers and Morocco is easily accessible from a number of major European cities. Prices have declined slightly in the wake of the economic crisis, but now seem to have stabilised.

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