By Humphrey Carter
THE foreign resident property market is stable, along with prices, and while a small percentage of Germans are selling up, the British market is very buoyant, according to directors of Solbank which, over the past 12 years, has grown rapidly across Spain, specifically catering for the needs of foreign residents and holiday home owners. While its client base is evenly split between domestic clients and foreigners, it is the only bank in Spain specialised in catering for the needs of non-Spanish residents. It has just launched a promotion to capture more clients while rewarding existing clients and promoting the Balearics. Open up a new account, and each new client will receive two return tickets on the Balearia fast ferry to Minorca, so too will exisiting clients introducing a new customer to the bank. In Ibiza, the same promotion is operating, but the trips are to Formentera. The idea has various objectives, obviously to boost our client base while promoting Balearia's new services and giving foreign residents the opportunity to experience Minorca or Formentera which, although so close, sometimes feel like a thousand miles away to some people, Solbank's marketing Director Alex Clayton said yesterday.
It's also a sign of our commitment to the Balearics and its tourist industry and we want to reward our clients with things they like to do, he added. Solbank is part of the Banco Sabadell Group, one of Spain's leading retail banks with over 1'000 branches throughout Spain.
Solbank currently has 69 offices in the Balearics, Andalucia, the Canaries and Catalonia, all staffed with multi-lingual staff so all non-Spanish residents can talk to their bank in their own language.
Jose Asensio Lopez, regional manager for the Balearics and Catalonia, is in charge of the 11 branches in Majorca and two in Ibiza, with new offices in key non-Spanish residential areas planned.
We have found that holiday home owners don't want to travel too far and waste too much time during their stays going to the bank etc, so we try to locate ourselves as close as possible to the heart of our client base, Lopez explained. Over the past 18 months, many of the leading European banks, such as NatWest, Barclays, Lloyds anbd Credit Lyonnaise, which moved into the Balearics during the late 1980s and early 90s boom to serve the foreign community, have either closed down or down sized, but Solbank's advatage, despite the present recession in some parts of Europe, is that it is not only catering for new arrivals but also serving the existing non-Spanish market.
It's a very big cake, and we are enjoying a very good slice of it, Lopez said, while at the same time, the competion has eased off with the withdrawal of the large European banks from the market. The foreign residential market is growing. Currently the market is being dominated by the British, although despite the focus having been very much fixed on the German community over the past few years, Jaime Malagrave Claderas, director of commercial banking, said that the market has always been evenly split, 40 per cent German and 40 per cent British. Perhaps it was because the Germans have congregated in large numbers in certain areas such as the Port of Andratx, Calla Millor and Peguera, they have appeared more prominent.
He also explained that the number of Germans selling up is minor in comparison to the size of the German community, perhaps two per cent, but what is clear is that the British are moving into Majorca in large numbers with the buying spree, until the recent surge in the euro, fuelled primarily by the pound. British property hunters are looking, on average, at properties between the 300'000 and 500'000 euro price range, although some are after properties in excess of the one million euro mark and hunting in exclusive areas such as Son Vida. Solbank director Nuria Torres Pujol said that what they are also finding is that, in the case of cities such as London where property prices are so high, British clients are buying their first home in Majorca while renting in London or selling thir London homes and buying two on the island, one as the main family home and the other, perhaps a studio or resort flat, to rent out. But overall, there has been a British swing in the market and Solbank is here as a bank they can talk to.