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TRAVELLER
IT ALL STARTED
with an internet search for ‘the
best places to live’. After 20 years working as a foreign-
exchange trader in Japan, one day Yorkshireman Tony
Collick got the itch to move to a new country, so he hit
the web. “I was looking for new horizons,” he explains.
“I looked into Australia, or going back to Sheffield, but
decided it would be more fun to experience a different
language and culture altogether.”
Widening his search, he and his Japanese wife,
Mari, soon focused their attention on Spain. “The
history, people, weather, lifestyle – it all attracted me,”
he says. “as it does a lot of people, I guess.”
He then came across some videos about Valencia
that a local estate agent had uploaded to YouTube
and, thanks to those and a couple of other websites,
his mind was made up. Without even visiting the city,
he was ready to take the plunge, and within a short
space of time, the 39-year-old trader found what he
was looking for: a modernised two-bedroom flat in the
upmarket Ensanche area of the city for €380,000.
Collick is typical of the new kind of nomadic buyer
moving into the Valencia area – young, professional
and with money to spend; he’s part of a growing group
of people who want somewhere stimulating to live and
whose jobs allow them to move anywhere.
Take Jørgen Steffensen, from Denmark, whose
transport company has branches in eastern Europe
and is now opening up in Spain. He found that the
infrastructure in Valencia – including modern and
excellent road links to the rest of the country – meant
it could easily work as a new hub for the business.
That’s why he recently bought a six-bedroom house
with an 1,800m
2
garden in the foothills of the Sierra
Calderona, half-an-hour’s drive from the city, for just
over €200,000. Of course, the local lifestyle, with its
cosmopolitan culture, was an important factor in his
decision: “It’s very relaxing,” he says, smiling.
Given the current economic climate, you’d be
forgiven for thinking the property market in Valencia
and the Costa Blanca would be flat at best. Record
unemployment, cutbacks and rising cost of living
tell the story of how badly Spain has been hit by the
recession. In the property market on the Costas, where
so much money was made during the boom, some
house prices have dropped by up to 50%.
But this is no bad thing for foreign investors. Dig
a little, and a more complex picture of the property
market on Spain’s eastern coast emerges than just
doom and gloom. Astonishingly, more than one estate
agent says that things have never been so good, while
foreign-property-buying adviser Overseas Guides
Company (
overseasguidescompany.com
) says inter
in Spain has risen as much as 60% in recent mont
Much of Valencia’s current attraction is due to a
decade of development that has resulted in some of
the most spectacular architecture in Spain, includi
Santiago Calatrava’s glitteringly futuristic City of A
and Sciences (
cac.es
), with its museum, planetariu
aquarium and opera house. At the same time,
high-profile sporting events here, such as the Amer
Cup and Formula One, have been lifting its profile.
INTERESTINGLY,
for both Valencia newcomers Col
and Steffensen, the internet has played a crucial rol
in their decision making. Indeed, more and more
buyers are depending on it almost exclusively to fin
new homes, while estate agents discover that the o
way to survive is by harnessing the power of the we
Talk to those selling in the city today and the ones
doing well have been embracing new technology,
not simply by putting their properties on websites,
but by engaging with potential clients and building
relationships with them through social media such
Twitter and Facebook.
One example of this new breed is GrahamHunt,
who deals with properties in the Valencia area. He
runs two websites (
valencia-property.com; houses-
sale-in-spain.net
), two Twitter accounts, a Facebo
page and has posted over 100 short information fil
on YouTube – the ones, in fact, that Collick found o
his internet trawling. “His videos were invaluable,”
the Yorkshireman. “There was nothing else like it.”
Hunt himself is pragmatic about using social
media. “It’s about building up trust,” he says. “I can
have a conversation with clients over several weeks
months thanks to social media. That means I get t
Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences,
left
, is wonderfully futuristic in its
design and contains a cinema, an
interactive sciencemuseum, the
largest aquarium in Europe and an
opera house
Valencia’s bustling
streets are attracting
young buyers to the city
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