More investors look to Asia-Pacific countries

More overseas property investors are considering Asia-Pacific locations, a new survey shows.
Austrailia, India and Thailand are among gainers in searches in April on the Rightmove Overseas website.

But economically-challenged European countries, including Spain, Portugal and Cyprus all lost out and across Europe searches fell 0.11% over March figures.

Shameem Golamy, Head of Rightmove Overseas, says, “Whilst, traditionally, people don’t tend to emigrate over the summer months, property prices further afield are attracting the buyers looking for a bargain.”

Australia moved up two places to the fourth most popular destination, behind Spain at 27.05% (down 0.96%), France at 18.5% (up 3.87%) and the USA at 9.46% (down 4.75%). The fallers were Portugal and Italy.

Further down the list, India, Thailand (pictured), Turkey and Malta all rose and New Zealand, Canada and Bulgaria all lost ground.

Looking in more detail at Spain, the highest placed area was Andalucía in 12th, (up 5.78%) followed by Valencia in 13th (up 6.53%) and Costa del Sol (down 0.61%) in 14th.

Alicante, Illes Balears, Málaga, Costa Brava, Costa Dorada, Cataluña, Mallorca, Murcia, Valencia and Costa del Azahar and Almería all improved rankings, but there were heavy falls in searches for the Canary Islands and Tenerife that both declined by more than 12%.

Just over half of locations (52.72%) saw more search activity, with 47.20% falling and 0.08% staying the same.

The single most popular destination was Istra, in Croatia, which more than doubled its searches by 103.72%.
Searches for Cyprus property fell 21.22% and was overtaken by a recovering Ireland as the seventh most popular destination.

“Cyprus has continued to drop and it’s likely this is due to the economic problems they continue to face. Interestingly, Ireland has replaced Cyprus as the 7th most popular destination which suggests people are still swayed by the cheap flights and the cost of property,” Shameem Golamy explains.
Charles Purdy, Managing Direc, tor of Smart Currency Exchange, says that following bad Eurozone economic news, it is not great surprise that searches for Cyprus have fallen, but it still had UK clients who were completing on property there.
“The key seems to be to keep your surplus cash in the UK until matters become more certain, and am sure there will be some great bargains to be had in the coming months.”
Rightmove Overseas is part of Rightmove.co.uk, the UK’s number one property website and advertises properties for sale in more than 80 countries around the globe from agents, developers and owners.
On average, it receives 183,000 unique visitors a week and generates more than five million overseas property searches a month.
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