Property News: Identifying buyers types in Spain

THE kind of person who purchases a property can be broken down into five broad categories.

To begin with, there is the first-time buyer, typically a young person aged between 25 and 35 looking to flee the family nest and set up home on their own. Chances are they won’t have a huge amount of savings and may have to overcome various obstacles in order to get a mortgage. On average first-time buyers stay in their first rung on the property ladder home for around eight years.

Then you have the buyers who have outgrown the starter home due to changing circumstances. Maybe they’re now living with their partner, children have arrived, or they simply have different needs. The report identifies these as often 35 to 45 years old, although there are also the retirement age buyers looking to downsize. In both cases their available budget tends to be around the €350,000 mark, depending on where in the country they live.

A third buyer classification is those searching for a second property to use as a holiday home or weekend getaway, usually somewhere on the coast or an inland rural location. They may also be thinking longer-term, planning to live full time in the property following retirement. The typical budget for this kind of buyer as €129,000, but adds this could be considerably higher in pricier areas of the Balearic Islands.

Moving on there is the small investor or the people who opt to put their savings in good old bricks and mortar, who quite possibly plan to rent out the property. Within this grouping are foreign buyers, usually over-50s who don’t need a mortgage, with an average budget of €95,000 or thereabouts.

Finally, there are the big investors, the professionals or companies, both national and based overseas. They will be focused on various kinds of properties, including those which they can rent out long-term, and likely to be in cities where there is a constant demand for rented accommodation.