Press Release Summary: Cape Verde has been one of the big stories for investors in property overseas in the last couple of years, with rising Cape Verde property prices
Press Release Body: Cape Verde has been one of the big stories for investors in property overseas in the last couple of years, with rising Cape Verde property prices, a plethora of new developments, new airports and new air routes including direct flights from Britain for the first time.
Such events as these have given the market momentum and built up attention and awareness of the archipelago sited off the west coast of Africa. Last week property firm Olive Tree international listed the country as one of the hottest spots for investors in 2008 for all the above reasons.
New developments lying ahead include more infrastructure development and the prospect of property in Cape Verde joining the World Trade Organisation. But in line with this, those involved in the property market in the country have been growing in other ways as well.
One of the major areas of expansion is that of property finance, the director of mortgage advisory firm MyMortgageDirect, Catherine Hearnden, has said.
Ms Hearnden stated that at the beginning, Cape Verde had very little in the way of mortgages for buy-to-let investors who could not pay by cash. Now, she has commented, this is starting to change as the market moves forward.
Describing the market as \"very, very young\", she said: \"There isn\'t a great deal of choice now, but they\'re starting to make refinements, more in line with what we\'d expect.\"
This, she added, was partly due to the influence of increasing demand as the market grew.
One notable feature of how this has been developing the market is the size of mortgages being taken out. Ms Hearnden quoted an average property figure in Cape Verde as varying from €80,000 (£61,000) to \"hundreds of thousands of euros\", with the top-end buyers paying out in cash and the middle market taking out mortgages - these often being a more modest €50,000, although some mortgages were as high as €300,000.
With mortgages available and the number of products growing, investors should be able to find more ways to obtain the investment finance they need to tap in to the growing market. Although the new connections from Britain - such as the direct service from Stansted which Cape Verde Air began in October - have made access easier, the most up-to-date statistics available show that the tourism market is highly varied. Official government figures released this month for the first half of 2007 revealed that 18.6 per cent of visitors came from former colonial power Portugal, Macauhub reports.
Of the overall tourist numbers, 88 per cent was from overseas, with Italians the second largest group with 16.8 per cent of the market, Britain third on 14.1 per cent and Germany fourth on 10.9 per cent. These figures demonstrate that the islands have a wide appeal across different countries. One particularly exciting thought for British investors may be that this 14.1 per cent came before the start of services such as the one from Gatwick, opening up the possibility that British tourist numbers will increase significantly, helping further enlarge the buy-to-let market on the islands.
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