The Complete Guide to Hurghada Property Released

Apologies for the fact that it has been over a month now since my last posting. The past month has been very hectic for me working on two very large projects One of them I will tell you about next week, but the first one that I can tell you about now is the one that I mentioned a month ago, the creation of Propertastic's Complete Guide to Hurghada Property and Egypt's Red Sea Riviera Real Estate.

If I knew how much work it would involve, then I probably wouldn't have started on the project in the first place. It's my own fault though as it is much more detailed than I originally anticipated.

I am very pleased with the results though and the feedback from those that read pre-release versions have also been very positive. If you are at all interested in purchasing property in Hurghada or the surrounding area, then it has to be an essential read because it allows anyone to compare the vast majority of the new developments that are current in progress in the area, together with giving a general overview of the area.

I kept adding and adding to it until it ended up covering 35 different developments and came in at just over 25,000 words over 87 pages. That was a lot of writing!

Here is the final listing of the developments that I cover in the report:

Al-Ahyaa Villas
Al Dora Residence
Al-Rivera City
Azzurra at Sahl Hasheesh
British Resort
Coral Pearl
Delano Beach at Sahl Hasheesh
Desert Pearl
Egyptian Pearl
El Andalous at Sahl Hasheesh
El Gouna
El Khayam Resort
European Village
Hurghada Dreams
Hurghada Marina
Jewel in the Crown
Lotus
Lotus Breeze
Manta Resort
Oasis Resort
Ocean Breeze at Sahl Hasheesh
Palm Beach Piazza at Sahl Hasheesh
Palma Resort
Paradise Hills
Pyramids 2
Red Sea Pearl at Sahl Hasheesh
Red Sea Pharaoh
Red Sea Residencia
Regency Beach
Regency Towers
Royal Manta
Royal Mirage
Sara’s Residence
Sea Land
Suleder Resort
The View

The Guide is available totally free to all registered members of Propertastic!

So what are you waiting for? Head over and grab a copy now and see what I've spent most of the last month of my life working on.

Click on the ad below to head to Propertastic! and see it for yourself.

Albania Revisited

Once of the most popular blog entries I have made to date is Property and the Tipping Point, in which I discussed the possibilities of investing in real estate in Albania.

In the article, I argued that I thought that it was too early for their to be large gains in property prices for a number of reasons, the main one being that there is very little tourism to Albania at the moment and I didn't see that there is the likelihood of their being much in the short-term.

Since I wrote that article, I have received some new information that I thought was worth sharing with you.

Firstly I was referred to some statistics from the Albanian Statistics Office to show that tourism is increasing to Albania. In 2004 there were 645,000 tourists visiting Albania, with the figure rising by 100,000 per year. These numbers are higher than I would have anticipated, but are still not that large by the standards of any of the existing markets.

Secondly, my girlfriend recently met with a developer from South Africa who had been touring Eastern Europe looking for development opportunities. He said that he visited Albania earlier in the year, but didn't think that the infrastructure was ready to start investing in the territory. He mentioned the fact that it was quite normal for the electricity to be out for a couple of hours each day. Not something that the majority of mass-market tourists are going to find acceptable (I certainly couldn't put up with it).

Instead he is planning on investing in Romania instead, a decision that we at Propertastic! would agree with as the climate for investment in Romanian property is currently looking very bright.

Most damning of all though was a recent article by Athena Kalaitzoglou which I discovered on the SMAnalysis blog written by Stavros Markos.

The article is entitled "Investment in Albania - High Risk" and mentions the fact that there is widespread corruption in the country and a severe lack of a legal framework.

It mentions that the government coffers are currently empty and so the country's finances are being supplemented by imposing fines on foreign investors for the most arbitary of reasons.

The article goes on to mention that there are often ownsership issues with regards to land and property. It is easily possible to buy some real estate, only to find that other payments are due down the line in order to clear up ownership issues, meaning that the overall cost can end up as being three times the initially agreed purchase price.

The article also mentions the same facts about power blackouts that we heard from the South African developer.

Another blog entry by a British expat who has been living in Albania's capital, Tirana, on July 4 also gives a similarly pessimistic view of the current potential for investing in the country. He has been living there for many years and so knows the market firsthand.

In summary, I am even more sure now that it is just too early for Albania to be a serious investment target, even though beachfront property is still very cheap compared to neighbouring Montenegro or Greece. Sure, if you have a large property portfolio it might be worthwhile making an investment as part of a longterm strategy, but it's going to be on a high-risk basis for a long time to come.

Why Are Old Media Property Tipsters Rubbish?

This is related to my last posting about journalistic integrity and which news is worthwhile circulating and which is not.

Just three weeks ago, my search for news came across an article from the UK's Sunday Mirror entitled, "Is Turkey The New Spain?" While the information contained within the article is not wrong, it is written in the style that the journalist seems to believe that she is the first to think of the possibility of investing in 'a brand new, developing market'. Although she goes on to contradict herself by saying that there is already an oversupply in some parts of the country.

While Turkey is still a good market to invest in and there is definitely money left to be made there, people have been buying there for man years already and I consider it as one of the more established markets - certainly the most established of the 16 that we cover on Propertastic!

It's not the first time that I have seen the UK's old media (newspapers and TV) get all excited about some market that is already way, way past its initial growth period and is starting to mature, so that all of the fast money has already been earned.

It seems to be the same for all newspapers - even the 'quality press' such as The Times and The Daily Telegraph always seem to be way behind the curve when it comes to their property tips. It's very rare that I find anything in any of their property supplements that is real 'news' to me and is thus worth passing on to Propertastic's visitors. The most useful information always seems to come from the English language newspapers in the markets themselves such as The Sofia Echo, the Turkish Daily News and the Warsaw Voice, all of which produce some excellent and fresh information relating to their local real estate markets.

So why is this the case? This is a genuine question to which I would invite any comments upon, because I really don't have a clue as to why the newspapers are so laggardly with their overseas property market coverage. OK, the TV shows I can understand are never going to be cutting edge - they have long lead times and are there for 'infotainment' and not news. Monthly magazines are also going to be up to three months late with their news.

But for the quality press in particular, I am clueless. Their pieces are presumably written by professional journalists with access to a wide variety of resources. Most of them publish material only once a week and so they should have plenty of time available to make some detailed research on markets. So why don't they? The property pages of the newspapers are always packed full of advertising, so I would have thought that it would be very much in the newspapers' interest to provide great coverage in order to attract the maximum amount of readers to the section.

Maybe this gives a clue as to the real reasons though - to keep advertisers happy. It's better for them to write yet another article on major markets such as Bulgaria, Turkey - or one of the even older favourites such as Spain, France or Cyprus because they have plenty of existing and potential advertisers who want to see positive coverage of these markets. If they instead concentrated on real new hotspots such as Montenegro or Romania, then they have less advertisers to benefit from.

This is just a wild guess as to what their motives are. Honestly, I have no real idea as to whether it is an editorial policy, lazy journalism or what.

No, if you are really looking for tips as to where the best places are for investment, you are better off forgetting about traditional media and concentrating on the Web. Of course I rate Propertastic! very highly as one of the best sources of information, but I would say that, wouldn't I. After all, its opinions are mine!

But in the interest of fairness I would also say that there are some other good resources on the Web (not too many though) that give some excellent tips as to up and coming markets with the potential of making excellent and fast returns.

The ones that I rate highly are:

Property Secrets
Amber Lamb
Global Property Guide

There are also some interesting tips on the Totally Property forum if you take time to search for them.

But as for the old media, the only use for them I can see is to keep an eye on them to see what Mr. and Mrs. Average - the Johnny Come Latelies - are starting to get interested in. Because when the mass market is starting to buy in a big way, it usually means that it is time to start planning your exit strategy because this will be the last wave of buyers into a market before it starts getting totally over-exploited (such as Sunny Beach, Bulgaria). If you miss your chance to sell to them, you might not get another one without selling at a significant loss.

Please feel free to add comments if you disagree with my opinions - I am most certainly open for a debate on the issue.

Journalistic Integrity

Every day I scour the Web looking for property news that's relevant to the real estate market in Eastern Europe and the emerging Mediterranean in order to add it to Propertastic's News Archive, and also because it's the only way I can personally keep abreast of all that is happening in each of the 16 markets that we cover.

I highly recommend that anyone who is looking seriously at investing in a particular market should skim through the last few months' worth of entries because it does give an excellent objective view as to the current status of each market.

At least it should be objective if I am doing my job properly, although sometimes it's not quite as easy as it sounds. Sometimes it's hard to differentiate between real news and PR spin. Other times it seems as if someone has an axe to grind.

Last Sunday I came across a brief article about the current state of the Moroccan property market which I found on the website of the North Africa Journal:

The bubble may not burst yet but the real estate craze that Morocco has been witnessing shows signs of stabilization, most likely on the temporary basis. There is a consensus as everyone in the real estate sector, from developers to bankers, recognizes that prices have gone through the roof, so to speak. So much so that potential buyers have decided they can no longer afford to purchase a home and prefer to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Mortgage lenders have been among the first ones to warn that the prices of new housing units have been alarmingly exceeding the real value of those units. Driven by unscrupulous developers and their speculative investors, prices reached unprecedented levels that are such a mismatch to the current wage levels in Morocco. And while prices have not decreased yet, they have stabilized to begin to worry the main players in the industry.

Although the article was short on hard data and actual quotations from real people, I thought that it would be an interesting piece to add to our News Archive. The North Africa Journal appears as a reputable site and I thought that it would be interesting to get people thinking because virtually every other article that I have added about Morocco has been very positive indeed.

Less than 24 hours later though, I got the following email in from one of the leading agents covering Morocco:

Dear Nick,

Thanks for the email. But I must admit I am extremely annoyed by the article that appears on your website. It is completely misleading, talks about “unscrupulous developers” and contains no facts or back up for any of the statements made. It is completely irresponsible and the worst example for lazy journalism, indeed it doesn’t even look like it has been properly proof read (see last sentence). Can you explain who benefits from this? Not the client – who is being given wildly speculative, incorrect and unfounded information. Not the agent who sells in Morocco – for obvious reasons or any of the many reputable hard working developers who try to give a good service.

Can you ask one of your “crack researchers” to explain?

I look forward to hearing from you,

Regards

Far from being upset at the accusations, I was quite happy to explain our policy when it came to reporting news.

My reply was as follows:

Hi,

Many thanks for your message. It’s good to hear from you.

Like other organizations covering particular markets online, we scour the Web constantly looking for articles that will be useful for our visitors – in our case individuals who are considering investing in purchasing property in Eastern Europe and the emerging Mediterranean.

We do write our own material and you can read Propertastic’s own thoughts regarding the current state of the Moroccan market in our Overview section on the market .

As you will read, our own editorial thoughts on the state of the market are very positive. But they are the thoughts of just one organization – namely ours.

We advise our visitors to do as much research as they can
into a market before choosing which is the right one for them. We make it easy for them by republishing all of the news items that we believe are relevant to a market.

The item that you refer to was taken directly from The
North African Journal on 26 September. It appears to be a respectable online publication, as you can see for yourself [at their website].

While checking for news, I come across of a lot of sites that ignore any news from a market that is less than positive. Sure, I can imagine that it keeps their advertisers happy if that’s their business model or else it helps them to sell property if they are in the business directly. However, as a visitor to their site, I soon come to realize that the value of the information on their site is quite worthless if they only present one side of a story. Propertastic! would definitely be the poorer if we adopted a ‘good news only’ policy because it would be a significantly less useful resource for visitors.

I don’t think that any intelligent investor would dismiss Morocco as a potential market from this one article alone, but that they would rather consider it in context with all of the other news articles coming from the market, plus Propertastic’s own overview. As can be seen from our Moroccan News Archive, the vast majority of news items that we have featured have been highly positive.

This situation is not unique to Morocco either – of the 16 markets we cover, all of them contain both positive and negative news items. In some territories, such as the Baltic States, the articles are overwhelmingly negative, but this reflects our own thoughts on the market.

So, in answer to your question as to who benefits – the answer is that it is the visitor to the site who benefits from getting both sides to every story. Although developers and sales agents might not like it if they get asked difficult questions as a result of these articles, but they should be easy to counter with cold hard facts, and I am all too ready to agree with you that the North African Journal article was very short on facts and very long on one reporter’s personal take on the current state of the Moroccan market.

Reading this article certainly hasn’t changed my opinion that Morocco is a good market to invest in. I doubt very much that it would greatly sway the opinion of any of our visitors either (because if they check the other 15 markets which we cover, they will find similar instances of the occasional negative article mixed in with the positive). After all, there is no such thing as a sure bet in property investment.

It is definitely a very interesting subject that you bring up here about the benefits of providing a full range of opinions regarding each county’s property market and I plan to write something on the next installment of our blog about it.

If you have any additional questions or comments, then I would be very interested in hearing from you.

Many thanks for taking the time and trouble to contact us and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind regards,


Nick

The agent got back to me later that day with the following response:

Dear Nick,

Thanks for your very comprehensive and well argued reply.

I quite agree that there should be no censorship with regard to positive / negative articles. I ensure that we always tell clients that this is an emerging market sothere is an element of risk involved and that this risk is frequently enunciated by “negative” news stories.

My gripe was more that the article was so poorly referenced and sourced without even a name to back up any of the statements. If it had been properly accredited I would have no problem with it. It’s one of my biggest annoyances in the overseas property industry that there are too many lazy agents (bred in Spain during the boom years) who are all too happy to offer soundbites with no real factual basis. This undermines that whole idea of overseas property as a serious investment option.

Since this exchange, I have started to give the source of all of our news so that, if anyone disagrees with an article, they can take it up directly with the original authors of the piece. If anyone else disagrees with any of the news items that are featured on Propertastic! though, please feel free to take a few potshots at the messenger!

I am always interested in hearing your thoughts, and will also give anyone a 'right to reply' here on the blog.

Debate is always good.