Being Honest and True to Yourself

Marion and I were recapping lately on all the different people we’ve come into contact with during the past 12 months, and it’s surprising that so many contact us without having done any research, some still have this notion that they can move to Spain with 100,000€ and buy a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom villa (on mains electric and water) with a swimming pool and 5,000M2 plot of land.

Dream on, this property may have been available 6 years ago, but today the above property is more likely to be nearer 200,000€.

That is not to say you cannot have your dream, some people have reassessed their criteria, they have settled for a smaller property, reformed the kitchen and bathroom, installed solar panels for electricity and built their own swimming pool. This takes time, as and when funds become available, but in due course they own a superb villa in the sun, and many people on a lower budget take this route.

Then there are the people who tell you their exact budget, they say they cannot go any higher, so we then spend at least a day matching their criteria and arranging viewings, on average for every viewing we reject a further 3 or 4 properties. So the big day arrives and we show the clients 10 properties that suit their budget and requirements, (rejecting another 30-40).

On two occasions this year we have been told by clients that they have bought through different agents but they have paid over 150,000€ more than their original (cannot go any higher) budget, they justified this by saying that the properties they bought were better than ours.

Well we’re sorry but had they been honest in the first place they would have been shown properties (at their true budget) as equally as nice, if not better, and for one couple in particular we would have saved them over 10,000€ as the property they bought was also on our books, but at a much lower price.

We have a policy of only showing properties within our client’s budgets, we know it costs a lot of money to fly to Spain, and you would not be happy if we wasted your time (and ours) showing unsuitable properties. Judging by the feedback we receive from our clients, it appears some of our competitors would do well to adopt this same policy.

Honesty really is the best policy