Property Services

Buying property in Spain has received a lot of bad (and good) press in the media in the past few months and years, with the land grab problems in Valencia and illegal property constructions all over Spain. As such it is vital that anyone (particularly a non-resident) takes advice before agreeing to buy a property or land in Spain.

Our first piece of advice when buying property in Spain is do not sign anything or pay any money over before contacting us. When seeing your dream home in the sun it is very easy to be pressured into signing on the spot and paying a small deposit, so please resist if possible. If however you have already done so don’t worry too much, we can still help you through the process.

The first stage of the buying process is to obtain an up to date “nota simple”, this will give you the registered description and owner of the property, and very importantly and debts or restrictions there are on the property. With the full address of the property (and the registration number, owners name and if possible copies of the deeds/local tax bill) we can request the nota simple for you and advise you on what we find. Sometimes and estate agent will already have a nota simple, although this is very useful you should still see a current one.

When negotiating the purchase price with the seller/estate agent very often they will ask for part of the price to be paid separately outside of the contract, more commonly know as “black” money. You will probably be told that this is common practice. Well although it used to be common changes in the laws in recent years now classify this as money laundering, and as such is totally illegal. Also, you do not stand to gain, only loose! The seller will gain as they pay less tax on the profit, you loose out as when you eventually come to sell the property the difference between what you paid and what you sell for is greater and hence you pay more taxes!! So do not agree to black payments.

Once we have established that it is ok for you to go ahead with the purchase we will advise you on the contract (called contrato de compraventa or arras) if the estate agent has already prepared one (they more than likely will!), or if not we can prepare one for you. At the same time we will talk you through the whole process of buying property in Spain, what you need to do/know and what taxes you will need to pay. We advise that you should budget for 10% of the purchase price in expenses and taxes, if you are taking a mortgage then this will be higher depending on how much you borrow.

When the time comes for you to sign for the property at the notary, we will review and advise you on all the documents before you sign them. The proceedings at the notary are more likely to be carried out in Spanish, so if you are not a Spanish speaker and need us to accompany you to the notary then this can be arranged, or if you prefer or not able to attend due to work/personal commitments we can sign on your behalf with a Power of Attorney. If you would like a Power of Attorney please let us know well in advance as it will take time to arrange, we will tell you how to go about getting it done. At the notary office you will need to have your Spanish ID number called NIE if you are a non-Spanish resident, please see our section on NIE applications for more information.

Getting a mortgage to buy property in Spain can be another maze of papers, interest rates etc. so we can help you find and arrange the best mortgage for you. We can use any one of many Spanish banks for a mortgage, or there are now branches of UK Building Societies cropping up which offer very comparable rates and of course services in English!

Once you have the keys to your home in Spain, we will arrange the transfer of the utilities etc. into your name and arrange the payments to be made automatically through your Spanish bank account (if you don’t have a Spanish bank account we can help you arrange this).