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8 out of 10 buyers said... - 15 December 2006

Knowledge is power. Forewarned is forearmed. You can never have too much good advice. We all know the clichés, and it is perfectly true that in the course of looking for a property overseas you should make the most of the information resources available to you.

In recent years, the amount of information available to buyers of international real estate has increased enormously, and it is now a case of trying to wade through all of the reports, articles, TV shows and magazines to find the most useful and pertinent material.

What’s more, in the past few months there seems to be a new survey appearing virtually every week, telling us where people are buying, why, when and how much they are spending. These come from agents, developers, tourist boards and government bodies, not to mention TV shows and magazines. So how do you know which ones are accurate, and what information to trust?

The first thing to check is the source of the information. If a survey is carried out by and agent or developer, it will pay to be aware of the fact that they are trying to sell you property. Even if the survey has been carried out independently, there are ways of asking specific questions to obtain the results desired. As an extreme example, if a survey asks whether someone would live in Spain given the opportunity, let’s say that 85% of people would say ‘yes’. An agent could then claim that 85% of people surveyed want to move to Spain.

Generally, the best and most representative figures come from specialist polling organisations, such as ICM, Gallup, Mintel and YouGov. Although often carried out or commissioned by specific companies, the methods used are tried and tested, and to a certain extent are standardised. Government organisations like the Office of National Statistics and the now-defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister can provide interesting results as well, though they often ask very specific questions. Specific non-government organisations (NGOs) like the Institute of Public Policy Research are also reliable for figures.

The next thing to look at is the size of the sample taken. The usual convention is that a survey should include at least 1,000 respondents to be statistically viable – essentially to make sure that any anomalies are ironed out by force of numbers.

The value in knowing what you are reading and paying attention to where it comes from can be clearly seen in the figures for a seemingly simple question such as: How many overseas properties are owned by the British public? In the past 18 months, figures for this have ranged from 200,000 to 2million in different surveys.

 

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