Over 49,000 properties were sampled and the national average property price came out at €240,000. Barcelona, along with Ibiza and Mallorca, were the only places to top the half a million euro mark, compared to a mere €77,000 for Jaen, 68% below the national average.

So what makes Jaen so cheap? Is it a culture-free dust bowl? Does the province have unseasonably bad weather? Is it a concrete enclaved inhospitable, modern town?

The answers are all “no”. The city of Jaen, situated 92km (57 miles) north of Granada, has been inhabited since 600,000 BC (by the Flintstone-esque “Pebble” Culture!). It boasts a Moorish castle, 11th century Arab baths and a 16th century cathedral and palace amongst its points of interest, and the thriving university adds a youthful element to this historically important area.

The weather, as with the rest of Andalucia, is mild and has contributed to the economic success of Jaen’s major asset – olives. Jaen is the world’s leading producer of olives and olive oil, producing about 10% of the world’s olive oil. The crop occupies 77% of the land and the oil is manufactured by around 55 oil mills. The region also boasts numerous national parks and nature reserves, including the Sierras de Cazorla nature park, arguably one of the most beautiful nature parks in Andalucia.

Since the beginning of 2006 Jaen has found itself in demand from property purchasers seeking a slice of “real Spain” and even featured on the popular TV programme, A Place in the Sun in May. The town of Alcala la Real, just 25 minutes drive from Granada, is the province’s main property hotspot. With a population of just over 21,000, there are plenty of amenities, such as schools, restaurants, bars, doctors and swimming pools as well as striking scenery and a friendly local community. Some properties in the region have experienced price appreciation of up to 60 per cent in recent months and demand has recently intensified.

The region of Andalucia itself attracts Spain’s largest number of tourists, receiving 14 per cent of the country’s 50 million foreign visitors every year. The rural tourism market is up and coming and Jaen accounts for 7 per cent of Andalucia’s tourists, with 490,000 visitors every year. This has led to an increasing demand for rental accommodation not only from foreign holiday makers but also Spanish nationals, especially from Madrid, seeking a rural holiday.

So what’s wrong with the place that makes it so inexpensive to buy? Well because it’s inland, there are no beaches. Swimming pools – yes, sand and wet wavy stuff – no. It also doesn’t have an international airport. However, Granada is only 90 minutes drive away from the city of Jaen and both Ryan Air and Iberia fly from the UK to Granada from about €100 return. And don’t forget for all ski lovers, that the Sierra Nevada mountain range is just outside Granada, so within day trip reach.

I told Adam about the origins of Kyero.com, my personal experiences of buying property in Spain and my opinions about the Spanish property market in general.

Adam recorded the interview and you can listen to it as a podcast (a sound file that you download and listen to on your MP3 player or computer).

If you have a spare half-hour, visit Nubricks and hear Adam and me chatting.

Martin Dell, Kyero.com

According to the Office of National Statistics, over £6 billion has been invested in Spanish property, accounting for 27% of British foreign investments. This mature property market has its advantages over relative newcomers offering low interest rates, a range of mortgage products and sustained growth. Some may say that Spain is “over the hill” when it comes to opportunities to profit through property however recent figures released by Kyero.com beg to differ.

According to Kyero.com, the largest independent website connecting buyers and sellers of Spanish property, the average property price in Spain is currently €245,000 (£169,000) well below the UK’s average property price which currently sits at £185,000. The most popular regions for property searches are Malaga, Granada and Alicante where property prices average €312,000, €158,000 and €216,000 respectively. There are however pockets of Spain which offer properties well below the national average in price yet have a strong potential for capital growth and rental income ? they are Almeria, Valencia and Seville.

Almeria, located on the south eastern tip of Spain, is a land of contrasts boasting unspoilt coastal fishing villages, picturesque towns such as Mojacar and access to the ski resorts located in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the province of Granada. The region had been one of Spain’s best kept secrets however over the past few years the area has opened up with a number of new hotel resorts and golf developments springing up west of Almeria town and Almeria’s airport being served directly from the UK by a number of budget airlines including Easyjet, Ryanair, Monarch and Flybe.

Property prices have reflected these advancements in communications and amenities; the last 12 months have seen a steady 12% increase in property prices from €171,000 in May 2005 to €191,000 today. Martin Dell, Managing Director of Kyero.com comments, “Almeria properties still offer a good option for buy-to-let investors, the property prices are 22% below the national average and with increased tourism to the region the demand for rental accommodation is high. We have experienced a 14% increase in enquires for 2 and 3 bedroom properties in Almeria in the first half to 2006 compared to the first half of 2005.”

The region of Valencia has also seen a steady rise in property values over the past year. The traditionally Spanish coastal town of Castellon, north of Valencia, in particular has seen a marked increase of 35% from €167,000 in May 2005 to €225,000 according to Kyero.com Located on the Iberian Peninsula, the Costa Azahar, or orange blossom coast, is a real hot spot for property investors. Boasting over 112 kilometres of unspoilt Mediterranean coastline, 320 days of sunshine annually and properties 8% cheaper than the national average this stretch of Spanish coastline is a real alternative to the traditional Costa Blanca or Costa del Sol resorts.

Valencia is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city and offers all that one would expect from Spain’s third largest urban centre. The America’s Cup which will be held in the city in 2007 has led to millions of euros being spent on improvements to the infrastructure for example the new high speed rail link from Madrid and the extension of the main airport which already receives low cost flights from the UK. The positive impact of the 1992 Olympics Games on nearby Barcelona’s property market is expected to be mimicked by Valencia in 2007 and so there is no better time than to invest in this truly Spanish region.

For the shrewdest of property investors, the traditional costa developments are no longer enough to tempt them; they are more interested in the increased capital growth and regular rental income to be obtained from inland locations. Martin comments, “Seville is a good choice for property investors who are more interested in Spanish culture, history and traditional life.”

The hosting of Expo 92 was a real turning point for Seville, the south side of the city was redeveloped and opened up to the rest of Europe. Since then Seville has seen an increase in both tourism, due to the new low cost flight routes, and domestic in-migration with many companies relocating to the Andalucian capital. This in turn has led to an increase in demand for rental accommodation. Seville saw a 33% growth in property values from May 2005 to today; this trend shows no signs of slowing and there are still property bargains to be had with average property prices being 41% below the national average at €144,000.

It seems therefore that our old friend Spain still has a number of hidden gems to explore and invest in. The potential to profit from property in this country is as good as any other within Europe and maybe we should think twice before ruling out our favourite holiday destination. For more information on property prices in Spain visit www.Kyero.com, your essential guide to Spanish property, and download your free copy of the latest Property Price Guide.

Rather than Spanish property losing value, the first quarter of 2005 saw price rises of 4.2 per cent, and appreciation of approximately 25 to 30 per cent in certain areas (source: Spanish Red Guide 2006). This is supported by recent figures published by the largest independent Spanish property portal, Kyero, which indicate that Spain continues to be a growing market.

Martin Dell, Managing Director of Kyero, believes that recent claims of a price crash are inaccurate: “My impression is that it’s primarily properties at the very top end of the market that are experiencing slight price erosion, most notably in some of Spain’s more developed areas. That’s not the same thing at all as a general slump in the price of all Spanish property.”

The statistics compiled by Kyero support the case for there being little evidence of a general price decline. While the Costa Blanca has seen prices for a four-bedroom property decrease by 5.8 per cent to 356,000 Euros since June 2005, prices in the Costa del Sol have remained constant. Canary Island properties have seen increases of 60,000 Euros, or 14.9 per cent, for four-bedroom homes.

Similarly, prices in Spain’s less-developed regions remain steady, and have risen in many instances. The price of a two-bedroom property in Tarragona has increased by 18.7 per cent from 150,000 Euros to 178,000 Euros. Similarly, a two-bed property in the up-and-coming Costa del Azahar has appreciated by 30,000 Euros (20.3 per cent) since June. Martin Dell says: “Buyers are always looking outside of the more developed areas in search of a bargain, and it is in these areas that significant growth in property prices is evident. Even so, prices in the old favourites remain steady.”

As well as providing free downloads of the price reports, Kyero’s website also details almost 60,000 properties for sale and to rent from 400 agents throughout Spain. Each time they display a property, Kyero also show a number of average price calculations to enable the visitor to make a quick and easy price check.

The statistics published by Kyero strongly indicate that Spanish property is still accruing in value, albeit at a slower rate compared to previous years. As Martin Dell says: “These reports enable purchasers to make better-informed decisions and also serve to demonstrate that the market remains healthy, and still offers good investment potential.”

Download the free price guide and trend reports

Kyero recently passed a significant milestone by posting the 50,000th property at www.kyero.com. Now, the company is putting that ever-growing collection of homes in Spain to good use by calculating and displaying price comparison information.

Visitors to kyero.com can download the free, seven-page Price Guide categorised by number of bedrooms and Spanish province. Inside, they can discover, for example, the average price of a three-bed property in Almeria (219,000 Euros – page 5 of the report). On the same page, they also learn that this is calculated from a sample of 1,011 properties and that this size of property in Almeria is 38% less expensive than the national average. Covering all the popular Spanish provinces, the Price Guide is updated every month, making it the most current and accurate source of pricing information available.

The Price Guide report gives buyers the big picture of what’s happening in the Spanish property market. “We recommend that purchasers download this free report and use it as part of their property research toolkit”, said Martin Dell, managing director of kyero.com. Additionally, specific price comparisons are displayed next to every one of the portal’s 50,000 properties. “Mostly, potential purchasers want to get a feel for property values in a specific area and understand how one area compares to another,” explains Dell. “Whenever a property is displayed on kyero.com, the buyer now has instant access to ten average price calculations, enabling them to make better-informed price decisions.”

There are three main ways that Kyero’s average price comparisons help the potential purchaser:

1. Understanding the price differential between properties within the same province: A two-bed property in Malaga costs 291,000 Euros while a three-bed requires an extra 135,000 Euros.
2. Comparing prices between ‘similar’ locations: The price of a one-bed property varies by 11% between the Balearic and Canary Islands.
3. Establishing a baseline figure to help when assessing the value of any particular property: If the average price of a two-bed property in Granada is 172,000 Euros, why is THIS property 150,000 Euros?

“Be careful though. Average price calculations always come with caveats,” continues Dell. “Statistics in general are only useful when their potential weaknesses are made clear at the outset. These are the main limitations to bear in mind when browsing the collection of Spanish homes at kyero.com.”

1. Prices are ‘as advertised’, actual sales prices will almost certainly differ.
2. The two, most popular provinces of Malaga and Alicante (Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca), significantly affect the national average figures because they represent 68% of the properties evaluated.
3. A small number of properties in some provinces means that the prices are less likely to represent the ‘actual’ average.

Dell summarises “The Kyero Price Guide is not perfect but it is a huge step in the right direction because it automates the calculations that potential buyers already perform for themselves. We have tried hard to add real value to the buying process because better informed customers make better purchasing decisions that benefit the individual AND the entire Spanish property market in the long term.”

The Kyero service is free for renters and buyers and is not affiliated with property developers or estate agents nor does it receive commissions based on property sales or rentals. Funded entirely from pre-paid advertising fees, kyero.com is a comprehensive and impartial resource for potential buyers who make direct contact with the estate agents of their choice.

The Spanish real estate portal passed a significant milestone earlier this month, posting its 50,000th property listing at www.kyero.com. The kyero.com property database is now the largest single collection of Spanish properties and agents available.

Kyero.com is a popular meeting point for those wanting to buy or rent property and those promoting properties in Spain. It operates by connecting buyers and sellers as transparently as possible.

The free service for renters and buyers is not affiliated with property developers or estate agents and does not receive any commission on property sales or rentals. Being funded entirely from pre-paid advertising fees makes kyero.com a comprehensive resource for potential buyers who make direct contact with the estate agents of their choice.

Spain’s premiere real estate portal also produces cost-effective solutions for real estate agencies by offering low-cost Internet advertising, tracking tools, automatic and manual data updates and a free Web kit to allow real estate agents to create and manage their online property portfolios.

Using the built-in reporting tools, real estate agents advertising on kyero.com can see how many times their properties have been viewed and how many of four different types of sales lead have been generated. “They can also customize the qualification level of the leads that they receive to match their sales goals,” Dell said. “The level and detail of reporting is constantly evolving and kyero managers actively monitor key metrics to assess the effectiveness of all kyero.com marketing initiatives.”

Properties listed on kyero.com are ‘groomed’ automatically and manually every day to ensure that the listing information and photos are clean and up-to-date. Some 80 percent of the properties are updated automatically directly from the agents’ own property management systems. Agents maintain the remaining 20 percent of property details via an easy-to-use management system or use the kyero system to automatically generate and update their web sites. Automated processes are also in place to continually check for stale properties and those with outdated links or photos.

“We automatically hide properties with no photos or price or description to make searching easier and more accurate”, said Martin Dell, managing director of kyero.com.

Kyero.com differs from other property portals in cost, visibility and measurability. Advertising properties on kyero.com costs as little as 1 centimo per property per day, and advertising rates are among the lowest available in the industry.

The site also uses organic search engine promotion and Internet advertising, allowing it to attract 150,000 unique visitors per month and display 600 property pages per hour. On average, kyero.com refers two sales leads to each advertiser each day.

Journalists as well as thousands of people searching for property in Spain use kyero.com as a research tool. Over 80 percent of potential buyers and renters are United Kingdom residents and the remainder are mostly from Northern Europe where English is a commonly spoken second language.

Spanish property seekers get lost on the internet because they are unfamiliar with Spanish geography. Without knowledge of the exact location of a property, they are unable to make informed decisions as they contemplate this major investment. By combining three, every-day technologies, kyero offers a helping hand to the ‘lost souls’ seeking Spanish property.

Speaking from the company’s offices in Granada, Spain, Chris James, Web-services Director for kyero commented “We noticed the problem when the number of properties available on kyero.com first exceeded 20,000. That’s a lot of properties to browse through so a majority of our visitors started refining their property searches by location.”

According to James, that’s the start of the problem because commonly used terms like “Costa del Sol” or “Alpujarras” do not accurately describe precise locations. Alternatively, searching by one of Spains’ fifty-two provinces is like looking for a needle in a haystack because the country is just so big. Another option, searching by one of it’s 60,000 officially listed towns is just too much of a focus for those unfamiliar with the country.

James again: “We saw that there was a lot of location data available but that it was either ambiguous, too broad or too focused in nature. We knew that we had to innovate, and quickly too, because the number of properties available on kyero.com just kept on increasing.”

They started by using the official Correos (Spanish post office) database. “After we had tidied that up, we had reliable location names, provinces and post codes.” says James. Next, they decided to geocode each location, adding longitude and latitude coordinates to each of the 60,000 towns. James continues: “The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when Map24 offered us excellent mapping facilities and allowed us to specify any map by longitude and latitude.”

This technology 1-2-3 is now a corner-stone of the quick and advanced searches available at kyero.com. For the ‘lost souls’, the quick search provides point-and-click searching using a map of Spain and clearly displays province name, the different areas it contains and the number of properties available there. By contrast, those more familiar with Spain can use the advanced option to search by a specific town. Once viewing a property, a click on ‘location map’ provides the most intuitive, informative and, more importantly, accurate location map available.

James summarises: “We have come a long way in solving the ‘Where?’ of Spanish property. The quick and advanced searches, combined with excellent mapping, help visitors navigate their way around the 40,000 Spanish properties available on kyero.com.”

There are quick and advanced property search options available and a number of methods of getting in touch directly with an advertising estate agent. kyero.com operates as a match-making service between buyers and sellers and is financed entirely by advertising fees. Because of this, kyero.com has no bias towards any one estate agency or property – allowing them to focus on helping buyers find and compare suitable properties.

After eighteen months of research and design, kyero.com went live in October 2003 to almost instant recognition and acceptance. The site now serves 1,000,000 pages per month and generates 5,000 referrals and property enquiries to it’s advertisers. A number of cost effective advertising options are available to estate agents and there is a ’30-day free test drive’ sign up at the kyero.com site – just click on the ‘advertise’ tab.

The future of kyero property advertising looks bright and there are plans underway to expand into other countries, replicating the phenomenal growth of kyero in Spain.

If you’re seeking climate and culture, how about the Andalucian city of Huelva and the province of the same name? The city of Huelva is an attractive port in this southern coastal province which borders Portugal – in fact, the city is equidistant from Faro in Portugal and Seville in Spain.

In the late 15th Century, Christopher Columbus put Huelva on the map. Setting off from, and returning to Huelva on his voyages of discovery to America, it was here where he also recruited much of the crew. Today, Huelva province enjoys a robust property market, largely due to its fabulous Mediterranean climate, and easy access from three international airports.

According to the latest Spanish House Price Index from Kyero.com, the average property price in Huelva province is now EUR 261,000, 5% above the national average (EUR 247,000, Sept 2007). The Spanish Ministry of Housing concurs with these figures and recently priced the average cost per square metre of property in Huelva at EUR 1,762.

If you’re looking for something other than sun, sea, sand and relaxation in Spain, how about Huesca in the northern region of Aragon?

The province of Huesca borders France, the local language is Aragonese, the entire region has a cooler climate, and the city of Huesca is industrialised. At first glance it would seem to have relatively little to offer to the property investor.

However, according to Kyero.com, the average property price in Huesca is EUR 288,000 and, according to the Spanish Ministry of Housing, EUR 2,083 per square metre – both far above the national average, and more expensive than Huelva.

The region of Aragon is one of Spain’s most affluent and, in particular, the province of Huesca offers comprehensive employment opportunities. This leads to a strong professional demand for rented accommodation which, in turn, leads to a healthy market for buy to let property investment. The rugged province of Huesca is a favourite for thrill-seeking adventure tourists who buoy up the property market with year-round demand for rental accommodation.

Where Huelva attracts holiday-makers, retirees and second-home hunters because of it’s climate and culture, Huesca is a thriving commercial centre, offering both opportunity and adventure. In almost every respect, Huelva and Huesca provinces are poles apart and they each appeal to property investors for different reasons.

Make sense of Spain’s 75 property markets with Kyero.com – Your essential guide to Spanish property, winner of 2007 Best Spanish Property Portal at the CNBC International Property Awards.

Summarising hundreds of thousands of visitor actions on Kyero.com, their ‘Hot Properties‘ page ranks Muro de Alcoy in Alicante province as the most popular town in Spain for foreign buyers. Muro de Alcoy, situated over 30km inland from Benidorm on Spain’s south east coast, has seen impressive house price growth over the past two years (over 22% per annum) and property in the town is now priced close to the national average of €247,000. The weather is good (but there’s better elsewhere in Spain), it is 34km from the Costa Valencia and less than 1 hour’s drive from Alicante airport with direct budget flights to the UK.

The town of Adra in Almeria province is second on the Kyero.com ‘Top 10 Towns’ list. Adra is the western most coastal town of Almeria offering year-round warm weather as well as bargain property prices, 43% lower than the national average – all within 1 hour’s drive of Almeria international airport, which combine to make the town highly attractive.

Tortosa in Tarragona province, north east Spain, rounds out the Kyero.com top three. It’s within an hour of Reuss airport, to the south of Barcelona and only 15km to the coast. It also offers bargain house prices 40% below the national average.

In comparison, however, the town of Cortes de Baza in Granada despite offering property priced an incredible 150% cheaper than the national average is located 140km from the nearest international airport (Almeria / Granada) which moves this town down to fourth position.

It seems that regardless of the weather, average house prices and access to the coast, the difference between being the number 1 destination in Spain and number 4 is keeping the journey time to and from the airport under an hour.

Kyero.com lists 90,000 properties for sale and to rent from 900 estate agents throughout Spain. Hundreds of thousands of visitor activities to the site are summarized each day and used to rank hot properties and hidden treasures in Spain.