14 posts found
So the Hotel Almenara closed last Sunday the 27th of October and a major refurbishment is about to start. We know something very special is planned so that Sotogrande will finally have the proper all singing, all dancing 5 Star hotel it has always deserved. We shall have to wait until Spring 2021 to see the finished article but everything we hear indicates we shall have a hotel to match the magnificent Finca Cortesin. Olé!
In 2017, property prices in Sotogrande Costa suddenly returned to pre-crash prices and whereas there were some really nice villas for sale in the Kings and Queens area at the beginning of that year at a level of between €1.2m and €1.5m, by the time we reached the end of the year anybody looking to buy at this price had missed the boat. It is also strange that this hopefully temporary slowdown is coinciding with such major investment in La Reserva by Sotogrande, S.A. I sometimes fear that some residents and visitors don’t even bother to take a look at everything that is happening there: the unique The Beach, the now Spanish top ten ranked La Reserva Club golf course with all its improvements, the new tennis and padel centre, the soon to be launched Village Verde, the new roads and landscaping which take you to the exclusive new residential areas of The Seven and The Fifteen and the most luxurious homes ever built in Sotogrande in El Mirador which overlook the 13th Hole at La Reserva Club and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Come on everybody, get out there and take a look!
Ten years ago on the Costa del Sol if you were to see a crane it would generally be stooped over the carcass of an unfinished building like the Grim Reaper. How good it is, therefore, to see cranes back and fulfilling their normal functions, indicating to everybody that the slow steady recovery in the construction industry is well underway. Here in Sotogrande, we see three major projects well advanced and attracting buyers in The Pier in Sotogrande Marina and La Finca and Senda Chica bordering La Reserva.
Some of my early contacts were in the white village of Gaucin which was clearly visible from the house on the estate where I lived as I looked across the Río Genal valley. The drive from Casares to Gaucín was tortuous in those days as the road was not only a dirt road but one with endless potholes and dangerous corners. Nonetheless, it was a spectacular drive with wonderful views and Gaucin was just starting to become attractive to foreigners looking for a new, cheap and adventurous life in undeveloped Andalucía.
The Spanish property market is starting to buzz again with the increase in year on year sales up by a record amount in the last twelve months. 2017 finally saw Sotogrande pull itself out of the doldrums after the market had come to a grinding halt in 2016 following political uncertainty in Spain and the result of the Brexit referendum. The sudden drop in the pound/euro exchange rate caused UK buyers to take stock but, with a more settled rate at just under €1.15 over the last year, these buyers are now returning to the market. The prime area of Sotogrande is on its coastal side and here there is suddenly a shortage of stock for four bedroom houses up to a price of €2 million. This is opening up the market again for villas which sit back a little from the coast, although they often have spectacular views. 2018 is expected to continue in an upward trend and it is hoped that the days of non-stop bargain hunters are over as we settle into a more stable market place.
So it’s Tournament Week once again at Valderrama as Europe’s top golfers come to Sotogrande for the Andalucia Valderrama Masters. It is thirty years since Valderrama hosted its first professional tournament, the Volvo Masters, which was the PGA European Tour’s end of season event and a precursor to today’s Road to Dubai. By 1988, Jimmy Patiño, the de facto owner of Valderrama, was already three years into his project of creating the finest and best maintained golf course in Continental Europe and he knew that to enhance his ambitions he needed a major tournament. Volvo chose Valderrama precisely because they identified in Jimmy a personality who shared their ambition to create excellence on the European Tour, which Volvo then sponsored, and the Volvo Masters was born.
