Are the days of the UK Expat in Mallorca coming to an end?
Everyone who chooses to live in another country is a migrant
The future of the expatriate community on the island may look different, but it still holds a promise of sun, sea, and a rich cultural world waiting to be explored. | EFE
Recent years have seen a noticeable shift, as the once-thriving UK community begins to unwind. One of the main reasons for the drop in numbers is the increasing cost of living. The dream of affordable Mediterranean living is fading, as local and international investors push real estate prices higher. The rising cost of living is another factor encouraging many UK incomers to rethink their long-term plans. The implications of Brexit have been particularly impactful for UK re-locators, who now face additional bureaucratic hurdles to maintain their residency status. This has seen many give up on their long-term plans and move on. Their next destination may not be a return to the UK but to other areas opening up with incentives galore to make the move easier. The dramatic shift towards Portugal, as the most welcoming relocation destination, is hard to beat.
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An interesting article, which reminds me of Sir John's Templeton phrase, the most dangerous words in the English languare are This Time is Different. It wasn't really so long ago that the Spanish property bubble burst. How short memories can be! Remember those Brits dropping off the house keys at the estate agents, dumping the car at the airport, and getting the first flight back to Blighty?Housing markets have a history of boom and bust especially in touristic destinations - they are sensitively linked to the global economy as luxury means it is indeed a luxury and not an essential. The global economy has overheated since Covid but there are now a lot of recessionary signs, and the US stock market bubble could burst this year with Trump's tariffs policy. It looks like Spanish coastal property, and especially Mallorca property, is a bubble that will soon also burst. In two years time, the picture may look very different, with distressed selling, and the anti-tourism movement will have faded. Remote working will also hit the buffers as countries demand double taxation which will mean only employees of multinationals will be able to do it. Whoever is buying Mallorcan property at these prices is getting in at the top.
Yes, well, British expats don't really have the greatest reputation, and there's orders of magnitude of others that don't expect everything to be "British", yet actually can afford it. And Brits only account for a fraction of immigrants here, and declining. Hearing a British accent is pretty rare in Mallorca (except for Magaluf of course, a mere dot on the southwest coast). So, "Are the days of the UK Expat in Mallorca coming to an end?". It rather looks like it. But it's rather inconsequential. It will make room for the other 80%.