REAL ESTATE – MARBELLA – What kinds of homes are buyers looking for today?
What kinds of homes are buyers looking for today?
The pandemic is changing our relationship with housing. The new owners are looking for open spaces, with light and in which they can telecommute.
The situation derived from the pandemic has had a direct impact on the demand for housing. The strict confinement has caused citizens to value more elements that were not so essential before and that many consider changing their home or reforming theirs. In fact, about 50% of families would like to change their house in the next five years as a result of the pandemic, that is, just over 13 million people, according to AEDAS Homes. And 41% of users intend to carry out reforms in their home before 2022.
According to the AEDAS Homes study, there are two main reasons why you want to change your home: because you do not want to continue living in your current neighborhood and because the house has become too small either because you need a room to telework, an increase in the family or because it is preferred to have a larger house, since more time is spent in it now.
In this sense, among the preferences of the buyers are: that it is a quiet area, or that the quality of the construction is high. “This aspect is important because having gone through strict confinement has shown all the discomforts that can exist in an old house, in which the quality of construction is lower than in a new house. This can represent an important opportunity for the market of rehabilitation and for the one of new construction “, this indicates it from AEDAS Homes.
In addition, other non-negotiable elements when evaluating the purchase of a property are natural light and good orientation, a spacious living room and a terrace or garden. “During the health crisis, people have begun to value the happiness that their home produces, where they spend more and more time, as one of the great levers to make decisions,” explains AEDAS Homes.
How to negotiate the price?
At the time of buying and selling a home, the seller seeks to obtain the highest possible profit from his property, while the buyer, on his part, tries to make the possible acquisition of it as cheap as possible. For the negotiation to be fruitful, some key actions such as establishing a budget, having solvency and being up to date with the real estate market. On the one hand, the buyer must know what is the maximum price that he can afford. As a general rule, it is necessary to have own funds, specifically 20% of the value of the home, since financial institutions grant a maximum of 80% of the value of an approved appraisal. In addition, you also have to take into account the expenses (taxes, notary …) associated with this type of operation.
On the other hand, it is important to know the market, both so that the seller knows what is the reasonable amount to ask for the property and so that the buyer understands what reduction he could request. To do this, it is necessary to compare houses that have similar characteristics, request the energy efficiency certificate (mandatory for the sale or rental of a home since June 2013), in addition to analyzing if the property needs any reform or if it will be necessary to carry it out in the future.
Another point of negotiation can be in the time that a home is for sale. The higher it is, the more likely the buyer will try to get a price cut. According to a report published in April, 33% of homes for sale were on the market for less than a month. In contrast, 21% were on the market between one and three months; 28%, between a quarter and a year; and the remaining 18% advertised for more than a year before finding a buyer.
In this context, house prices are still 36% below the highs reached in 2007, when the real estate bubble in Spain had not yet burst. In this sense, the average price of a property of 80 square meters stands at almost 151,000 euros, while 15 years ago it was around 225,000 euros.
However, in the last five years prices have grown by 16%. Spaniards had to pay an average of 129,680 euros for the purchase of a home of 80 square meters in 2016, compared to the 150,666 euros of average disbursement in 2021.
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