Place in the sun Live, Earls Court March 30th-April 1st. 2012

Good luck, Georgia.  

I hope that you find lots of people interested in buying in Spain, as when it goes right it is a wonderful place to live.  We had a bad experience initially and may have lost money in our first attempt to buy a property here (we still live in hope of getting some of our deposit back!), but we now live in a new flat on the edge of Jumilla and love our life here.

Please post on EOS on your return, as we would all be interested in knowing how much interest there is in buying here and what people's perceptions are.

Sue

The organiser of A Place in the Sun is reducing its NEC show footprint by 10 per cent this year despite expectations of attracting the same number of visitors.

The biannual show was most recently held at London’s Earls Court from 30 March to 1 April and reported a nine per cent dip in year-on-year attendance to 4,753 (unaudited). The figure was a 16 per cent increase on visitors to its Birmingham show last October.

georgia, how did the show go?  What was the interest like in property in Spain?

Hope it went well for you.

Justin

 Hi Justin,

The show went really well,i think we were all really suprised.

We booked 71 people out in 3 days,it worked out at just over 3.4 couples an hour booking to come out and another 25 or so asking good questions and looking to come out this year.

We have provisionally booked to do the NEC in September and from the booking plan its nearly 3/4 full already.

We haven't done an expo for 4 years and i was a bit sceptical myself,in the end i was pleasantly suprised.

We got caught in the strike action coming back and we are all pretty exhausted but.....we sold one from the stand and the first client on the stand at10.00am Friday morning is here now after we picked them up from the airport last night....i think we have 6-7 out next week.

I didnt get to see any of the presentations but i understand they got a good reception.

The most frequent comments were regarding people being suprised at the prices.

There was a demonstration outside from about 50 people so i hear regarding land grab,Cyprus not Spain though.

So all in all, very productive.

It was nice to see a few members of EOS as well,thanks for taking time out to come and have a chat,it was nice to put a few faces to names.

Just as a note,i do not know how London is going to cope with the Olympics!!!! its crammed to the hilt already,although  a lot of people who spoke to us are going abroad to avoid it.

We are now preparing to work through Easter to keep up but i am definitely not moaning!!

Wow, that's a great result and so glad to hear it went well.

I suppose for people who haven't been following what's been going on in the property market over here in recent times they would be surprised at how much the prices have dropped.

Great stuff and hope you get plenty of sales out of it 

Justin

Hi Georgia, glad it turned out so well for you.. but must admit very surprised at such a high sign-up rate also!  As has been suggested already I guess many people may not have kept up with price shifts so were pleasantly surprised, particularly if they have ample disposable income. 

Out of curiosity I'm wondering if / how you pre-qualify someone (financially) on the spot, for trips across as unless you have at least some relatively small financial commitment from them, isn't there a danger that if they don't convert it could impact on your business financially? (I'm assuming the days of £29 flights and free hotels in return for very high % conversions are probably long gone!).

ps - No need to respond in any detail if anything is commercially sensitive. 

 Hi Growler,

As you say,the days of the fully paid inspection trip are long gone.

As in qualifying people financially..well...if they are cash purchasers we purely have to rely on trust,if they are clients that require mortgage,we AIP them with a bank  first before they come out,this saves our time and theirs if they dont qualify for a mortgage.

The conversion rate is still very low as people take longer in general to make a decision but we take this for granted now and it becomes part of the job.

We only ask for two things with any client known as the M&M....Means and Motivation,its then down to us to do our job right and find the property that ticks most of the boxes.

If anything i underestimated how busy we would be,both at the show and now we are back..........

If anything the show taught me that there are a lot of people out there very positive about coming to Spain.

(Justin) we had some EOS members ther that drove a long way to be there,they were all very complimentary of the site and the job you are doing also.

Bring on Birmingham!!!!!