Category: Buy2Greece

Foreigners doubled their investment in Greek property, mostly holiday homes, in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2013, Bank of Greece data show.

Bad weather forced Ryanair to cancel their flights on Sunday. About 40 Liverpool-bound passengers are stranded on a Greek island and are possibly informed that might not get out of Greece before next month. The stranded passengers reportedly lost their composure when the budget air carrier responded indifferently.

The passengers at the Corfu International Airport claimed that they were left in dark about the real incident. According to the reports, there are a few heart patients and the passengers had to sit at the airport for almost 12 hours a day.

In a statement made by the Irish budget airline, a spokesperson said that the adverse weather conditions forced the cancellation of two flights to Manchester and Oslo Rygge on Sunday. He also said that the affected passengers were offered accomodation and refreshment vouchers.

Ryanair said that it is looking for a favourable weather condition to schedule additional flights for the stranded passengers and will soon contact the upset airline passengers.

Southern Europe’s cash-strapped governments are courting wealthy Chinese homebuyers, seeking to bolster their battered real estate markets by offering visas to those who purchase prime properties.

Cyprus, Greece and Portugal are providing resident permits to foreign buyers, while Spain is about to adopt a similar measure. The chance to purchase a home at depressed prices in southern Europe and gain what’s known as a golden visa is mostly being sold to Chinese investors, according to brokers.

“Property is what really attracts China’s rich,” said Nuno Durao, a founding partner at Irglux, a unit of real estate agency Fine & Country, in Cascais, Portugal. “With just half a million euros, high-net-worth Chinese investors will get a good return on their property investment and at the same time enjoy a handful of EU benefits they don’t have in China.”

Southern Europe is the latest target for rich Chinese homebuyers, who have been snapping up properties from Vancouver to London since 2010 as their wealth swells and China’s government steps up a three-year campaign to cool home prices there. Cyprus, Portugal and Greece are hot spots for the newly affluent Asians, according to SouFun Holdings Ltd. (SFUN), owner of China’s biggest real estate website and an organizer of overseas purchasing tours for Chinese seeking cheap properties and a chance to live in the EU.

Residential homes and hotels stand along the shoreline in Limassol, Cyprus.

Fast-Track Process

Greece and Cyprus offer fast-track permit processes for purchases of at least 250,000 euros ($335,000) and 300,000 euros, respectively. Portugal’s program has a minimum price of 500,000 euros.

While some wealthier European countries also grant special resident visas for investors, most require larger outlays and may not involve real estate. The U.K., for instance, grants special visasto individuals with at least 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to invest in the country.

Those policies aren’t as attractive to wealthy Chinese as the incentives being offered in southern Europe, said Edmund Zhao, a real estate investor from China who spent 700,000 euros on an apartment in the coastal resort town of Cascais after arriving in Lisbon in April.

Zhao said he expects to receive his resident permit this month, which requires him to stay in Portugal for a minimum of seven days during the first year and 14 days every two years during the duration of his five-year visa. The visa will also let Zhao send any children he may have in the future to Europe’s most prestigious schools, he said.

Residential housing and other buildings stand on the bank of the Douro river in Oporto, Portugal.

‘Love It’

“I want to move there with my wife and parents as soon as possible,” Zhao said in a telephone interview from Hangzhou, eastern China, where the 38-year-old lives with his wife. “I love it.”

Buyers from mainland China typically look for immigration opportunities in southern Europe for their families because of the drop in real estate prices, said Wang Ning, a manager in the international property department at SouFun in Beijing. Some visas allow buyers to live and travel freely within Europe’s borderless Schengen Area, made up of 26 countries fromFinland in the north to Greece in the south.

While some Chinese buy a place as an investment and don’t live there, most are getting homes for personal use or to send their children to schools there, Wang said. Home prices in southern Europe are attractive compared with China — 300,000 euros buys a 200-square-meter (2,150-square-foot) villa facing the sea, said Wang. That amount buys a 68-square-meter apartment in centralShanghai, according to SouFun.

Euro’s Depreciation

Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis has also meant a depreciation of the euro, making real estate more affordable to Chinese buyers. The currency fell about 17 percent against China’s yuan from the beginning of 2010 through the end of July.

Residential property is seen in Glyfada, the coastal resort on the Aegean Sea near Athens, Greece.

Searches for Portuguese properties on Juwai.com rose more than threefold from January through April, said Andrew Taylor, co-chief executive officer of the Chinese real estate website aimed at international home shoppers. Interest in Cyprus, Spain and Greece increased as much as 108 percent in that time, Taylor said in an e-mailed response to questions.

Cyprus is already “booming with Chinese investors,” said Nikolas Michalias, a property valuer at G&P Lazarou in Cyprus who spends half the year in China promoting golden visas tied to real estate investments. “Every day there are more than 20 Chinese nationals landing in Cyprus to search for property.”

The island nation this year followed Greece, Ireland and Portugal in requesting emergency aid from the EU and the International Monetary Fund.

Diverging Economies

Though the euro area’s economy came out of a record-long recession in the second quarter, parts of southern Europe remain stuck in the slump, with more than half of young people in Spain and Greece jobless. Meanwhile, the number of millionaires in China rose 4 percent from the previous 12 months to 2.8 million, the Hurun Research Institute said in June. Last month, new home prices rose the most since January 2011 in the Asian nation’s four major cities on speculation the government will refrain from imposing tighter curbs.

In Spain, where the collapse of a decade-long property boom has sent home prices down about 30 percent, lawmakers are set to approve a measure that will allow investors to apply for a renewable two-year residence permit if they spend at least 500,000 euros on a property, purchase 2 million euros or more of government debt, put at least 1 million euros in a Spanish bank or pay that much to acquire stakes in Spanish companies.

Rapid Response

Spain received “almost an immediate response” from Chinese investors when it announced the visa proposal last year, said Pia Arrieta Morales, a director at DM Properties, a Christies International affiliate in the seaside resort of Marbella.

Demand from Chinese buyers for golden visas is just beginning to surface in places like Greece, which passed its law in April. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visited China in May and announced that non-Europeans who invest in the property market could gain the right to live in Greece.

A Chinese man became the first foreigner to benefit from the program earlier this month, Greek newspaper Kathimerini reported Aug. 13. Local real estate company BuildUp said the deal was signed on Aug. 8, and the firm is working with a Chinese company to promote Greece’s property market, according to Kathimerini.

“The visa legislation in Greece is still very recent and has so far had very little impact on the real estate market,” said Ioanna Plakokefalou, general manager at Hellenic Realty in Athens. “While we had some inquiries from Chinese and also Russian investors, their interest will depend on the political and economic situation.”

Portuguese Villas

Alison Buechner Hojbjerg, a director at Quinta Properties, a real estate agency selling luxury villas in Portugal’s southern Quinta do Lago resort, said the firm hasn’t had as much success as hoped from the golden-visa program.

“Those kinds of investors may be looking to buy cheaper properties than the ones we are selling,” she said.

A total of 102 golden visas have been granted in Portugal, mostly to Chinese investors, since the program began last year, according to data from the Portuguese Immigration and Borders Service. Brokers like Luis Hortelao with Re/Max in Lisbon say that even with a 500,000 euro minimum, one of the few barriers to more Chinese homebuyers coming to Portugal is language.

“My Chinese clients often come to Portugal and hire a translator,” Hortelao said. “They know exactly what they want: a modern property to rent out during their absence and a visa to travel in Europe.”

Chris Liem, owner and principal of Engel & Voelkers in Hong Kong, said Portuguese real estate offers a better alternative than property in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia.

The benefits of buying in Portugal “far outweigh the investment costs,” Liem said. “Particularly for high net-worth Hong Kong and mainland Chinese who are looking for higher economic returns, a stable investment, a lifestyle investment and easy access to EU benefits.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Henrique Almeida in Lisbon at halmeida5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jerrold Colten at jcolten@bloomberg.net; Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net

Last year, new overseas investment by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China unleashed a wave of outbound investments by major Chinese real estate companies.

Now, the latest policy update by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) knocks down yet another hurdle for Chinese companies investing abroad.¹

Under this new policy, going into effect October 6, investment projects abroad no longer require approval from the ministry – save for those in industries and countries deemed sensitive by the Chinese government.¹

Not surprisingly, astute developers have been watching policy changes closely to capitalise on such new guidelines.Investments by Chinese developers have charted a 17% increase since the NDRC increased the threshold last December from $100 million to $1 billion for overseas investments required to obtain approval.²

One such developer is Shanghai-based Fosun Group, which has taken bold steps in recent years to steadily expand overseas – spending over $3.7 billion on foreign acquisitions since 2010.⁹

Fosun has undergone its fair share of successes, challenges and fierce competition, but they’ve only grown from strength to strength. With the new policy going into effect today, the world is its oyster.

Sources: 1. Mingtiandi.com; 2. Jones Lang LaSalle; 3. Bloomberg; 4. WSJ; 5. Financial Times; 6. Financial Times; 7. The Australian; 8. Mingtiandi.com; 9. Bloomberg; 10. WSJ

Did you know? The renminbi (RMB) literally translates to mean “the people’s currency”, while the yuan(CNY) means “dollar” in Chinese.

What’s the difference between the Renminbi and Yuan? Renminbi is China’s official currency Yuan is a unit in the renminbi currency Hence, it would be incorrect in Chinese to say something costs 100 renminbi – it should be 100 yuan instead. Just think of the pound vs. sterling. However, most locals in China more commonly use the colloquial term of kuài (块) instead, which means “piece” – similar to “buck” and “quid”. So you can say “100 kuài”, which means “100 pieces of money”. Here’s the full break down: 1 yuán (元) or 1 kuài (块) = 1 dollar 1 jiǎo (角) or 1 máo (毛) = 10 cents 1 fēn (分) = 1 cent

Russian courts could get the green light to seize foreign assets on Russian territory under a draft law intended as a response to Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.

Source: Reuters

Vacation rental portals have become the most massively used tools among the people who use internet for booking their vacation homes. These have nearly replaced the older methods like directories and classifieds. Therefore, you are required to concentrate deeply on how you post an ad about your vacation rentals propertyon online booking portals.

Most often a visitor will see ad headlines and decide if they want to view the complete description,amenities, rental conditions and pictures of your property. However, many homeowners tend to make mistakes in writing their ad headline which directly affects the amount of visibility they get on their listings. Mentioned below Tips are two very commonly made, but easy-to-avoid mistakes.

Specifying the type of home you own in the headline

A suggestion on not mentioning the home type may sound weird at first, but it has clear logic and research behind it. This is because many a time people have misconceptions or biases about a particular style of house. For example, some folks feel condos are less attractive than bungalows or villas. Others may feel that an independent villa may be offering fewer facilities than a house in an apartment building. In most cases these are just misconceptions. The only way you can make things clear for your prospective clients is by demonstrating how lovely your home is irrespective of its built-style. But this is only possible when people click on your ad and see all that you have posted about your house. So it is a wise choice to leave out the house-type from the ad headline. Try doing this and see for yourself the difference in the amount of traffic your web site receives after it.

Keep your Vacation Rental Calendar Up to Date

The most important part of your listing is your rental calendar. Make it easy: an updated calendar leads to more inquiries and booking requests. There are two options to update your calendar: You can manually change or update your rental’s booked dates regularly, or sync it with an existing calendar by importing the data from websites like Lodgify, Bookingsync and other similar sites.

Mentioning the number of bedrooms in the listings

Writing the number of bedrooms you have in your vacations home is another sure-shot remedy to drastically reduce the number of visitors that click on your listings’ link. Your audience is narrowed down if you give too much information in the ad headline itself. People visiting the listings may be more inclined towards a house that comfortably sleeps more people, but it is also possible that they compromise on this part if they really like a particular house a lot. It is more important for you to show prospective clients how comfortable and unique your home is than specifying how many bedrooms it contains. So even if the number of bedrooms in your house does not match the expectations of a particular visitor, they will at least have visited your page and may refer your house to another friend, or may be use it later when bedrooms are not a constraint.

Remember that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media are necessary technical step that makes your ad visible to a larger audience. So it makes sense to gain some SEO knowledge and write effective descriptions and headlines that get you noticed. The higher the traffic your web site gets, more are the chances that you will be able to enhance your customer base.

A spot with the beautiful tranquility of the mountains or the ocean outside your front door can be just the weekend re-charge you need in your life, but coming up with the money to finance or buy a vacation homeisn’t easy.

If you don’t have cash on hand to buy a second home outright, refinancing your primary residence might help you get the cash flow you need.

Just make sure you know the finer points before you start building your new skiwear or swimwear collection.

The Refinancing Process

In order to get the funds you need for your vacation home, you’ll have to do a cash-out refinance loan. This means taking on a new mortgage which is greater than the amount you currently owe on your house.

You’ll keep the difference between the amount you owe on your original mortgage and the amount of your new loan, which you can use to buy—or put a down payment on—a vacation home.

Remember, when you refinance, you are applying for a whole new loan. That means going through the mortgage process again, complete with credit checks, income verification and debt-to-income ratio evaluation, all of which will affect your new interest rate.

Plus, you’ll have to pay closing costs.

Is it possible?

Just because you have a home does not mean you have the option of refinancing it. Several factors can make you ineligible to refinance:

• Bad credit
• Having owned your primary home for less than 12 months
• A poor debt-to-income ratio
• A poor loan-to-value ratio (you want to have yours at 80%, at least)

To help you land your dream vacation home, try a pre-approval service like the one featured on the realtor.com® individual listings page.

By checking the box that says, “I want to get pre-approved by a lender” you’ll be connected with up to three lenders right away.

Consider Taxes When Buying a Vacation Home

How you choose to use your vacation home can affect your taxes, which may make juggling two properties more difficult.

For example, if you only plan on the occasional weekend away, it may seem like a good idea to rent out your vacation home part of the year.

However, under the tax rules for rented properties, if you use your second home as a rental, you’ll only be able to say in the home 14 days—or 10% of the total days the property is rented out.

If you would rather use it as a personal residence, a special tax rule allows you to rent out the home for 14 days without having to report that income to the IRS.

This could be a good idea to help with all those new monthly expenses.

Other Considerations Before Buying a Vacation Home

A vacation home is a big investment, and refinancing isn’t cheap. Lenders are more cautious about risking money for second home mortgages, so don’t be surprised if the loan for your vacation home isn’t as good as the deal for your first mortgage.

But that’s not all you should be ready for.

Follow these tips so you won’t get caught off guard:

• Get a thorough inspection done. If the home was used as a vacation destination previously, the owner may not have kept it up-to-date.
• It’s a good idea to only refinance if you can get a lower interest rate. That way, you will free up extra cash you can use to fund your vacation home’s mortgage and down payment.
• Since this is your second mortgage, your debt-to-income ratio should generally be capped at 36%.
• You will probably need a down payment of 20% to 35% for conventional mortgages—and even higher for luxury homes.
• Interest rates for a second home can be a bit higher than those for primary home purchases.
• Unless you buy the vacation home outright, you will need enough money to cover the mortgageson two homes. Make sure you have enough monthly income to do so.

Offer a definite rental finalization date

More than often rental owners miss out on lucrative guests simply because they wait too long for the formalities to get completed and receive the payments. It is imperative to fix a specific date by which the agreement should be signed by both the parties involved and obtain the rental amount. Rental occupiers generally approach many owners before they finalize upon a specific home. They prefer to wait for negotiations to occur, and subsequently try to avail a lowered rental price. Since they are not in much of a hurry to finalize the deal, it is up to the rental owner to take the initiative and hurry things along.

Securing your rental

It pays to secure your rental in some way or the other. One of the best ways of doing it is to receive a token or advance payment in the form of a retainer. The idea is to commit your guest to the rental, so a non-trivial amount should be fixed as a retainer. It is important to specify the nature of the advance option. You could accept it as a part of the actual rent payable, or as a refundable deposit which can be redeemed in case of cancellations.

Avoid future pitfalls and issues

The nitty-gritty of the rental can create issues later on at the time of occupying the home. Sometimes guests tend to complain, or appear dissatisfied with what they have rented after finalizing the offer. The issue may be related to the amenities offered by the rental, the duration of the stay, the location preference, or any other reason. It is important to specify exactly what you are offering and what your guests are renting. So don’t just rely upon verbal discussions or talks – get everything in writing. Before signing the agreement, renters are supposed to thoroughly read the contract, and this is when many aspects associated with the rental are made clear.

Getting the dates and occupiers right

One of the commonest issues faced by both the rental owners and guests is the time and duration of booking the rental, in addition to who will be occupying the home. This can generally occur due to misunderstandings or a lack of clarification, or misconception, on the part of the property owner or the guest. So it is wise to include the specific dates and times when the guests should check in, for how long they are expected to occupy the premises, and the names of individuals who will be staying, in the agreement. The payment related aspects can also be included to further consolidate the agreement.

Specifying the mode and time of payments

The mode of payment can be a cause of concern with rental property owners. While most owners are completely satisfied with bank checks and pay orders, a few rental owners prefer their payments through PayPal or credit cards. It is a question of how quickly you prefer to receive your payments. Moreover, you need to apprise your guests how much in advance they are required to pay to confirm their stay by making the retainer payment. It would help them to make arrangements for the payment.

Accident claims, insurances, and cancellation charges

In the event you guest may undergo an accident or suffer a certain financial loss due to any reason, you need to clarify that you are not to be held responsible for it, and will not be liable to pay any compensations. You should clearly specify that you do not provide any types of insurances or are liable to honour any type of claim in any way or manner for anything that happens to them during their stay. You should also specify the cancellation charges due to you in case the guest decides to postpone or cancel his or her rental.

Legal consents and signatures

It is good to follow the policy of including the guest’s consent in the form of signature on every page of the rental agreement. It is just a legal formality in case the guest decides to sue the rental owner by manipulating legal documents after he or she has signed it. If you prefer using electronic form of correspondence such as emails to work out the rental specifics with the guest, it is advised to use electronic signatures to legalize your correspondences.

Giant of travel domain Expedia has launched Expedia app for tablets in India. The app will be freely available for Android, Apple and Blackberry platforms. This exclusive app for tablet users enables them to choose among various destinations, hotels and flights.

Kathleen Tan, CEO of AAE Travel, which operates on the Expedia brand in Asia said, “Expedia is moving from being just a website to being a travel data platform for the users wherever the are, on whatever device they are on. Expedia, world’s largest travel company and AirAsia, world’s best economic air carrier jointly run AAE­ AirAsiaExpedia.

“Travellers expect an easy, convenient way to explore travel destinations and browse flight and hotel details and they expect to be able to do it in a way that feels right for them when they’re on their tablet. Our tablet app gives them this experience, while leveraging the in­depth industry knowledge and personalized insights our powerful Expedia search engines provide”.

In 2013, tablet growth has increased exponentially in India in year 2013 with half of the users spending two hours or more on the tablet, according to the industry report. Keeping the upcoming surge in tablet users in India Expedia is now eyeing on applications for mobile devices that provide best travel planning experience.

“At Expedia, investing in technology has always been our priority and with the exponential rise in Indian tablet market, we wanted to explore this vertical and ensure an all­round presence with this first ever tablet travel app in the Indian market”, said Vikram Malhi, MD, Asia, Expedia.

To address travellers evolving needs, the new Expedia tablet app is specifically optimized for mobile exploration and browsing and introduces a handful of unique features:

Single Search Box: To eliminate heavy search interfaces, the new tablet app offers a single search box to do the lifting. When a traveler enters a city name, landmark, or airport code, the app will show hotels and flights relevant to that query – no dates or specific details are required at the start.

First­Ever Combined Hotel & Flight Travel Search: For the first time in the industry, combined search has arrived for the travel market. Rather than searching for trips in a rigid, linear progression of flights then hotels, or hotels then flights, Expedia is introducing one combined search that provides both hotel and flight results simultaneously, available all in one glance.

Collections: Expedia presents various themed travel destinations to spark interest in future journeys. Collections offer customers the opportunity to explore vacation destinations they may not have otherwise considered. Beautiful locations come to life in a particularly compelling way on tablet devices. Collections offer a rich combination of design, mobility and travel research.

Content is catered to various regions and will be updated based on traveler feedback.

Consolidated Trip Planning, Booking, & Data, Shared Across Devices: In the begining of 2014, Expedia introduced Scratchpad in certain markets around the globe. Scratchpad is a easier way to keep track of your travel searches. When a traveler is signed into an Expedia app, trips researched on a tablet device will appear on the desktop or mobile Scratchpad allowing travellers to begin their travel planning from where they left off – on any device.

“The travel industry has largely thought about each trip as a single transaction and has poured energy into making individual transactions better. That’s no longer enough for travelers who dream, plan, research and buy travel across multiple devices,” notes John Kim, Chief Product Officer at Expedia Worldwide. “We’re beyond the era of just desktop and mobile. Expedia is evolving how we think about that connected customer and how we invest to best serve them before, during and after they travel. Our new tablet app embraces Expedia’s core strengths by bringing together our marquis hotel and flight capabilities to create one beautiful and easy­to­use combined search experience. We encourage people to try it and share their feedback.”