La Cinuelica - A Typical Spanish Urbanisation
Posted on June 9, 2008 - Filed Under Travel and Leisure
North European TV has been littered with “live the dream” TV shows for several years now, with examples of prices and locations throughout the world, where we can have a second holiday home or even move to a sunnier climate permanently. This has inspired many North Europeans with the notion that you no longer need to a millionaire to own a second property abroad.
Spain has become the favourite choice to have a second home, because of its climate, its location and up to recently cheap property prices. But in reality the dream that we often see on these TV shows like living in white washed villages or in a remote finca or in a villa by the sea, is not what most people end up buying in Spain.
The most common purchase has been of apartments or a house within a modern housing estate, which are called urbanisations.
La Cinuelica in Los Altos Is Just South of Torrevieja is a typical type new Spanish urbanisation. It may look different and have different types of property, but the principles of everyone living together in a community is the same here as every other urbanisation in Spain.
When the builders have finished building not only, the houses but also the swimming pools, gardens, car parks and roads, it has to be handed over to the community. By that time the community must have elected a president and at least 2 people on the committee to act on behalf of the residents to say whether they are happy to take over the community at this time and that the quality of work is up to standard.
Once this is all handed over, the responsibility of the pool and its surroundings becomes the responsibility of the community, so it is normal for rules to be set at this point, like what time any noise must stop, when the pool will be locked, what kind of building work can be done on your house etc. From now on you can’t just decide you want to change the colour of you gates, house or do any building work without the agreement with the community. The community agrees the rates charges, which includes waste collection, pool maintenance and all utilities. Compared with the rates system in the UK, it is much cheaper at about 20% of the charge. Some urbanisations are too big for one community so there are often several, there are likely to be around 18 communities on La Cinuelica urbanisation as there are 18 bocks of houses planned each with a pool and separate gardens.
Ironically most of the coastal urbanisations are dominated by North Europeans like the British, Swedish, and German with only a few Spanish owners per block, so this new way of doing things can be quite daunting until you see the benefits.
Especially now with reportable hundreds of thousands of holiday homes owned in Spain by the Brits alone, you can’t help thinking when the building of these urbanisations will stop. Still everywhere you look you can see the familiar cranes building more homes like La Cinuelica, and this is even when prices have increased dramatically over these last 2 years.
There are small signs that the local councils are recognising that building work must slow down with area around La Cinuelica has being given 2 years to be completed and then the builders must move on. For those of us who are already here, this is good news but for those who intend to come in future years, this may mean higher property prices.
Mark is webmaster for Home Insurance and Spanish Car Hire
Tags: blanca, cinuelica, costa, torrevieja
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