All Forum Posts by: John Cobb

Being an old hand at this game in Europe I have entered a world that has so many abbreviations and words that I have no idea as to what context they are meant for. Things like Short Sell, Pre Foreclosure offer. ATV etc, etc. This must also be a problem for new people coming to the industry as well.

So I challenge all you old hands out there to help me and others to understand the talk and if you read this Josh perhaps you can think of a section that would list all these for future reference

Hi FLFlipper
Thanks for the reply and no I do not think you are a smartass! If only more people were as honest about the situation. The things you have said are very poignant to our situation and most I have come across in my research, but I am still very optimistic and my reasons are this. We are buying the properties free of any mortgage or leveraging so after the day to day costs, local and state tax we are looking at the bottom line. We will be purchasing a minimum of ten properties and will be adding to our portfolio roughly every three months so we will be opening our own Management and Maintenance Company to take care of them so I expect my team standards to be very high. We will project the 'all under one umbrella' attitude in our web site and arrange deals with the local attractions for our guests. As for only having 50% occupancy well this would be a dream as here in Spain we are lucky to get 25%. In fact this year we are averaging 19% and turning most of ours over to Long term rentals.

Where a lot of people have gone wrong is to believe the hype and fall into the trap of buying a home that they can use for a few months of the year and rent it out for the rest and expect that to pay for the huge mortgage they took on to get it. Unless you can afford a second mortgage without relying on rentals you should never take the risk. So many have fallen into this trap and that is why Spanish banks have had a record number of English people just handing back the keys and walking away. A friend who is a bank manager here had twenty three mortgagees hand back keys last month because the summer was a wash out and they could not afford to pay any more monthly payments. Its a disaster and the homes are not even worth buying under auction as it will be many years before the market picks up and they are resalable, which makes them absolutely worthless as part of an investment portfolio. So Florida here we come.

Hi All
I am an Englishman living and investing in the Spanish Resorts, unfortunately the market here is dead and likely to be that way for many years to come especially when you take into account that the Spanish government has allowed a massive building plan over the past 10 years that has left hundreds of thousands of unsold new properties littering the coastal regions and adding to the economic downturn in property prices. I would not even look at foreclosure properties to buy here as nearly all the income is from European vacationers and that market is DEAD.

It is my intention for me and my investors to look at purchasing properties in the Orlando area of Florida where the short term and long term rentals should still be profitable, taking into account that it is still the vacation capitol of the world with over 49million people visiting it each year. But if you have any info contrary to this or my assumption are wrong pls let me know.

Any help and advice will always be welcome from all quarters, good or bad news welcome.