ISSUE NO. 1662
11 - 17 May 2017
COSTA DEL SOL
Stop Press
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WWW.EUROWEEKLYNEWS.COM
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Millionaire find! Golden visa woos Arab and Chinese buyers By Matt Ford Malaga is now the secondmost popular province in Spain for the world’s wealthy. The Costa del Sol is topped only by Catalan capital Barcelona in a ranking of the number of luxury properties sold since the Spanish government introduced their ‘visa for the rich’ in 2013. Also known as the golden visa, the document permits individuals from non-EU countries to purchase properties with a value equal to or greater than €500,000. In Malaga, 348 foreign millionaires have purchased housing since the new system was introduced, compared with 893 in Barcelona, 306 in Madrid, 151 in Alicante, 91 in Girona
FOREIGN MILLIONAIRES: Are purchasing property.
and 77 in Valencia. The most important market is currently China, from where 702 buyers have spent €489 million, while 640 Russians have made investments worth €502 million with these two countries contributing 64 per cent of sales.
Other nationalities appearing on the list include Ukraine, Egypt, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Lebanon and Iran. Ricardo Bocanegra, president of the Costa del Sol Foreigners’ Association, has paid tribute to the golden visa sys-
Rain and cold but rising to 27ºC GET ready for possible rain today (Thursday) and tomorrow. This is the warning from the state weather agency AEMET following a mostly cloudy day on the Costa del Sol yesterday with temperatures dropping to 20ºC
after a previously sunny start to the week. But by tomorrow (Friday) evening and on Saturday mercury levels could soar to 27ºC when the hot, dry wind known as the terral is forecast to sweep Malaga Province.
tem, calling it “an indisputable success.” However, Chinese buyers are not flocking to the costa, where the market is being driven by Arabic capital, particularly from Saudi Arabia. “It is the Arabs, principally, who are making large investments in luxury mansions, especially nationals of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” says Bocanegra, adding the Russian and United States markets are also making waves in the so-called Golden Triangle formed by Marbella, Estepona and Benahavis. “The big advantage of the golden visa is it allows them to reside in Europe whenever they want without having to be here for six months per year,” he concluded.