Making the Costa del Sol more accessible to foreign residents

Foreigners have been moving to the Costa del Sol since the 1960s and services have grown to meet their needs; private clinics and hospitals with multi-lingual staff, international schools and services and businesses which cater to particular nationalities, languages and cultures.

The government knows that they also need to accommodate foreigners who may not speak the language, as this is a boost to the economy. Each Town Hall has a Foreign Residents Department, which is dedicated to their needs and is an excellent first point of call for any new resident. In recent years, these services have expanded and new offices are often opening. For example, a large new foreign residents office opened in Torremolinos in 2017 and added more support services this summer, responding to the increasing need.

Medical centres and hospitals in the most popular areas for expats have volunteer translators to help patients and there are many services springing up offering support to navigate the healthcare system in general.

One area which foreign residents often find difficult is supporting their children in the state schooling system if they have limited Spanish themselves. Luckily, in some areas there are bilingual schools being set up within the state system and other schools are taking the initiative to set up a support system for non-Spanish speakers.

Estepona Town Hall has just announced that they are creating a pioneering service which offers interpreters for parents in their public schools. This will offer an interpreter to accompany foreign parents to meetings with teachers to help their children to integrate better and perform to their best ability within the Spanish school system. They offer this service in ten languages including English, French, Russian, Norwegian and even Arabic!

All of these facilities and services make the Costa del Sol more popular to foreign residents and what is called residential tourism – people that come for part of the year and live there for extended periods of time. These people offer excellent opportunities for property owners who rent out their property to secure rentals outside of the peak summer period. Many Scandinavians for example will come for the winter only and then return home for the summer. If you are open to reducing your prices for longer term lets, this offers an amazing extra revenue stream, while still allowing you to rent to tourists over the peak summer months.

The many foreign residents who live here all year round, also offer excellent options to rent out your property long-term. This is a major growth area and there is a lack of supply to meet demand. Prices are increasing as a result of the shortage and so we’re encouraging owners who don’t use their property to consider this sector. It is a lot easier to find tenants for long-term rentals, than for the highly competitive short-term rental sector and the strict legislation which has been brought in to regulate holiday rentals, does not apply to long-term rentals, so it’s a lot easier to set up and manage.

Our Property Management specialists offer long-term rentals management packages which can help you with the set up and day-to-day running of your long-term rental property. We can offer all inclusive packages, or just a few services to take away the stress. Contact us to find out more.