Rude Awakening
Citing a few examples, people who thought they were buying a property with a clear view of a bay get a rude awakening when one day they suddenly see construction cranes and equipment for a new building. Or the nice Spanish man turns out not to be the owner, as he claimed, of the house people have just bought.
What follows is then a marathon process of legal wrangling under the foreign rules.
Despite the dangers, it is in particular older-generation Germans who are drawn to spend more time than just a holiday in a place where the weather is warmer and the red wine better. Beike estimates that there are about 40,000 serious would-be buyers each year.
Out of reach for most people
In the Swiss region of Tessin, where wealthy German senior citizens get together in restrictive clubs, property prices are far out of reach of people of normal incomes. Nor is there scarcely any construction property to be found on the French Cote d'Azur.
But at Calpe, on Spain's Costa Blanca, a vacation apartment in a concrete high-rise can be obtained for 50,000 euros (US$43,000).
Those searching for the peace and quiet of the Mediterranean must do so from their balconies, for down on the streets there is the noise of the Carneval Club -- which was established by the permanent German residents of Calpe.
RSS