Flamenco Properties is an independent startup. It’s a fledgling initiative to improve the way properties are sold, or to better describe this; to improve the way properties are marketed for sale. There is a significant difference between sales versus marketing.

I’m Charlie, I started out at an early age in an engineering company that had been influenced in its manufacturing and marketing operations by Lean Service Improvement. However, this wasn’t exciting enough for me so I set out on a change of career into the far more exciting world of emergency medicine.

Whilst not jumping out of helicopters, racing fast response cars or providing emergency care around the world my passion has been Service Improvement and outside of work it has been renovating properties and binge watching episodes of Grand Designs.

In this time of buying houses and renovating them, I developed a fairly good sense for identifying good from bad estate agency practices. Fast forward several years and I and my partner Chirro decided it was time to find somewhere our young family could settle and call home and try to escape contract working around the world, with nowhere being called home.

After considering many potential locations from as far afield as Zanzibar to Canada we finally settled on the attraction of Andalusia and particularly the Costa Tropical and the province of Granada. There are few places in the world such as California in the US and Granada province in Europe where you can claim to be able to ski the mountains in the morning and swim off the beaches in the afternoon and the Costa Tropical has far less sharks than California.

Unfortunately we found the process of house hunting in Spain to be a terrible experience. Too many real estate agents are not proactive and literally lose the interest of serious buyers.  This was so much so that we decided the better properties to pursue were actually bank properties. Rather than the average real estate agent trying to coerce the buyer towards a more expensive property within their portfolio, the bank and its nominated agent tends to focus solely on the bank property the buyer shows interest in. The banks are far more willing to disclose all relevant information a buyer requested.

At least in California the sharks are in the Sea 😉

So we’ve decided to combine our knowledge of marketing, service improvement and our knowledge of house improvements and the buying process in Spain to better serve both sellers and buyers in the region. This brings the seller far more interest in their property.

Sellers should note that almost every potential buyer will have budgeted for their property purchase plus a separate budget for improvements and furnishings. If a potential buyer makes the cardinal mistake of telling a real estate agent what their budget is, don’t be surprised if after disclosing they have €150K for the purchase and €30K for improvements, the agent will very quickly be tempting them away from your property towards €180k plus properties “already improved for you”. This type of agent wants a percentage of the buyers maximum overall budget, not the smaller budget for the initial house purchase. The sellers fee always comes indirectly from the buyers budget.

Don’t believe us?

Test other real estate agents by making an initial enquiry on a specific property they have for sale and see how quickly the agent starts asking about your budget and then starts mentioning other different properties.

Flamenco Properties isn’t going to operate in that manner. We are implementing numerous changes and improvements to the way properties are marketed so both the seller and the buyer each get a much better deal.