Tenerife is a beloved destination for Lithuanians to spend holidays or the entire winter. After the war in Ukraine broke out, a number of Lithuanians also decided to acquire property on this Spanish island. “We don’t fit on the island anymore,” said a Lithuanian real estate agent in Tenerife.
With its mild oceanic climate, Tenerife is a popular holiday destination for Lithuanians. However, some people not only holiday but also spend the winter months on the island.
One of them is Tomas from Vilnius, who bought a home in Tenerife in the spring of 2023. The man says that his family has been spending summers on the Canary Island for seven years now. Since rental prices have been rising, the family of six started thinking about buying property here.
“We noticed that it was difficult for us to rent something bigger, so we bought. Roughly speaking, the rent for three rooms was 80 euros per night, then 100 euros, 120 euros. In the winter of 2022, it was already 150 euros,” Tomas told LRT.lt.
The house that the family bought on the island cost around 240,000 euros. Since 2022, property prices in Tenerife have also started to rise, according to Tomas.
Žilvinas from Vilnius also bought a winter home in Tenerife, where he says he spends 5-6 months every year. His family bought a 160-square-metre apartment for over 300,000 euros just before Russia invaded Ukraine.
He also says that real estate prices in Tenerife have been rising over the last five years, so he is positive about the investment.
“One reason is to diversify the risks of war. Lithuania is in a risk zone, close to Russia, so it is not wise to put all the capital in one place,” Žilvinas told LRT.lt.
When discussing the other advantages of Tenerife, the man mentions the good weather, a variety of activities, and the Lithuanian school.
“I don’t want to move here permanently because I feel Lithuanian, but we have a good Lithuanian community in Tenerife. So far, living between the two places has been working out,” he said.
Everything was ‘swept’
On the very first day of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, and Lithuanians started taking an active interest in buying property on the Canary Islands, according to Ieva Vainaitė, a real estate agent at Keller Williams Sunset agency in Tenerife.
“When war was declared in Ukraine, my phone didn’t stop ringing,” she recalled.
In her words, everything has been “swept” over the last two years in Tenerife. Developers are looking for plots of land to build new residential buildings, but there are practically none left, Vainaitė said.
“The island is very limited in this sense. There are a lot of restrictions on green areas, national parks. It looks like a lot of land, but you cannot actually change its use. [...] You could say that we don’t fit on the island anymore,” she explained.
Property prices in Tenerife have risen by over 30 percent since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to the real estate agent. The most sought-after real estate costs up to 200,000 euros, but there is a severe shortage of such properties on the island, according to Vainaitė.
“Puerto de la Cruz is the most sought-after area. We have now found eight apartments for up to 200,000 euros. Two of them are practically uninhabitable or in very poor buildings,” the real estate agent shared.
To buy a home in Tenerife, people need to have around half of the value of the property and can borrow the rest, Vainaitė explains.
"If you want to buy a house for 200,000 euros, you have to have 100,000 euros already saved up, and the rest of the amount could be borrowed if you have the right requirements, a good salary, no loans in Lithuania,” she said.
When asked about the rental market in Tenerife, the real estate agent noted that one-room apartments cost up to 800 euros per month for long-term rent. Larger apartments with a garage cost between 1,200 and 1,500 euros.
The largest concentration of Lithuanians in Tenerife is in the resort of Los Gigantes, according to Vainaitė.
“If you walk down the street and try to go to a restaurant, you’re bound to meet some compatriots,” she said.
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