Has anyone ever been on a Place in the Sun? Is it just a free holiday?

[EachandEveryone]

Dear god I’ve just watched the most dour faced couple looking at houses in Oliva for €80,000. Even with no experience of Spanish property I know that 80 grand isn’t going to exactly get you a mansion everything was a flat no, except the one that was way over their budget and they offered 80 grand and would not budge. I dont think I’ve ever seen anyone buy a thing on this show, they certainly weren’t put on it for their sparkling wit. Do you think they do financial checks on them before hand?

I’m watching this right now as we went on holiday to Olivia in the summer,.
I watch the programme quite a bit, and loads of people do buy places from it.
However sometimes you do get odd folk. There was a couple I saw in Sicily I think recently who were completely unrealistic. They wanted the moon on a stick for €100.
They eventually doubled their budget to get what they wanted.
Fun to watch though.

What a miserable git he seems

I have never seen anyone buy anything on it even when they seem very enthusiasticabout somewhere theres always a reason why they dont buy or on the odd time they do buy there will be a bit at the end. Where ir says it all fell through at the last minute.

I've always said I don't understand why the couples on these programmes who are in a position to either move mortgage-free or purchase a second home, look so very, very sour faced about it. You'd be excited, wouldn't you?!

I record all these and binge watch them to get me through the winter.

I can't understand why people have a budget and then the presenter gets exactly what they've been asking for for under that budget. They then put in an offer 20 grand under the asking price which is way under their budget. The Sellers come back with a counter offer which is still under their budget and they refuse to budge.

I hate how there was no update as to whether they got the property or not!

We bought a villa on the Costa del Sol in Autumn 2015.
Before that we went to the place in the sun show at The NEC.
We leanrt nothing from it, it was a complete waste of 4 hrs drive and petrol money.
Whilst we were there, the casting team were wondering around asking if you were going to buy etc.
We said we had rented a villa for 3mths to drive around and get a feel of where we wanted to buy.
We had met in this area and knew the area well and were 100% committed to buying- and we did.
They asked us lots of questions on their questionaire. Then asked us if we wanted to video audition.
So we were then told to go and queue up for the audition. It was one cameraman holding a large video recorder and a lady asking questions on camera.
The queue was over 2 hrs long we were told, We went to the video area to watch and it was dismal.
every man and his dog auditioning, some looked like they couldnt buy a paper bag let alone a holiday home, otheres giggled, others clamped up, some made a show of theselves.
We decided against queuibg up.
We bought our villa 8 wks later.
Now we see other buyers in our area and know they show them bank repo's which are very difficult to buy, 4week limit, no mortgages, high tax to Spanish Gov, The banks sell them cheap but the tax is on the current value which can be several thousand euro's more than the sale price. No wonder no one buy's.
And most are illegal properties too

I want to know if they take you to the equivalent of [insert crap town of choice] and try to persuade you that it's Chelsea.

My husband and I were on it years ago with good ol' Johnny and Jasmine. The reason we didn't buy anything was because a) we only did it for a laugh/free flights to see family and b) because all the properties were shit. What they don't show you on camera are all the crap bits of the property!! Think Jasmine was actually quite embarrassed showing some of them....🤪

Do they do credit checks?

No, we just uploaded a very drunken vid audition online saying why they should pick us and within a week they phoned us to arrange doing it.