Buying Villas in Spain - A Common Sense Guide
By Mike Lingwood, MRICS Chartered Surveyor
1) Where to buy
Although from afar many places on the coast of Southern Spain appear to be much alike there are major differences from one place to another and anyone seriously thinking of buying a property should initially concentrate on deciding where to buy rather than becoming too focused on individual properties that look enticing from the agent's details.
Start by making a list of all locations that you think might be possibilities based on your existing knowledge of various areas, info from friends and contacts and also find out as much as you can from the internet.
Then plan a trip to spend at least a couple of days and nights in each of the locations that are on your shortlist to get a feel for each of them. You will quickly find that just like the areas you know well back home there are some places that appeal to you rather more than others. Perhaps traffic levels are higher in one town than another making parking difficult much of the time, maybe there are significant climate differences or perhaps you did not expect to hear quite so many English voices, maybe the locals are more friendly in one place than in another or you did not realise that a car would be needed for all trips to shops and restaurants.
Of course budget is a major factor so it is a good idea to look at a small selection of properties in each area that interests you to see what you can expect to get for your money. Any sensible estate agent should be happy to show you a few properties even if you come clean and say that you are just trying to find out what you can get for your money in that area.
Once you have decided on a location try to spend more time there perhaps renting for a holiday or two to be really sure that this is the place for you and during these confirmation visits you can start the property search in earnest.
2) How to avoid the pitfalls
Salobrena is the place where my wife and I settled after our initial exploratory trip along the south coast in 1987 and we still find it ideal for our particular requirements but whether or not you decide to look for your new Spanish home here or any other place in Southern Spain there are some pitfalls that you will want to avoid. In recent years the legal system relating to property purchase in Spain has been tightened up and many of the loopholes previously used by unscrupulous vendors have been closed but it is still all too easy for purchasers to get into varying degrees of difficulty.
However just by using one simple rule that I will come to shortly it really is quite easy to avoid most of the potential problems.
One of the big success stories of the internet is the auction site eBay. Here buyers who have never met their sellers happily send money in advance confident that the goods will arrive and will be in the condition that they were described. It works because of the eBay reference system and the items that command the highest prices are normally those where the vendors have the best references (It is called "feed back" in the eBay system) It is clear that people who are recommended by many others and have a track record of being reliable are likely to carry on being so and of course the converse also applies! If you have no knowledge of the eBay system copy and paste the following url into your web browser and you will see the "feedback" relating to a successful eBay trader: http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=mwieloch&ssPageName=VIP:feedback:3:uk
Margaret and I nearly made a mistake when we were first looking for a property in Salobrena when the agent/developer who was offering us a rather nice building plot almost managed to persuade us to part with a substantial deposit and enough money to complete the first stage of the building works. That was in 1987 and if we had gone ahead then we would still be looking at the vacant plot! What he failed to tell us was that although the plot had clean title and was designated as building land on the town plan, there was no possibility of getting a building licence there until the infrastructure of this residential area had been upgraded. We were lucky enough to meet other people in the area before taking the plunge and more than one warned us to be very careful when dealing with this particular agent/developer. That was sufficient for us to reconsider and instead we bought a re-sale house. Others were not so lucky and there are plenty of people who bought plots in this location from this same charming, multilingual, agent/developer before they realised that they had been misled.
With the benefit of 19 years experience here we are now only too well aware that there were many other things that could have gone wrong as frankly we were rather naive and assumed that all we would need to do would be to appoint a lawyer and that this would in effect guarantee that all would be well. Not so!
Back home in the UK we were used to our lawyer ensuring that the legal formalities would be completed in a satisfactory manner and that there would be no charges or outstanding debts against the property. We were also used to the lawyer making comprehensive searches via the local authority. Here no similar "local search" system exists and such matters as reliability of the water and electricity supply, route of new roads, planning rules that apply to nearby or adjacent properties, ongoing disputes with neighbours, financial health of the community of owners, responsibilities for maintenance of roads and the many other factors which could affect the use and enjoyment of a property are normally not revealed by the legal work of the lawyer. It is really up to you to find out for yourself the answers to these "searches" questions. Not at all easy for most purchasers who perhaps do not speak Spanish and have little idea where to start looking for the answers.
So my simple rule is this:
Do not commit to a purchase until and unless you have got satisfactory answers to these common sense "search" questions (or you have found someone to help you with the purchase whose local knowledge on these matters you are happy to rely on.)
Your estate agent, a local lawyer, the developer, the individual you are buying from or anyone else for that matter could well be this person. It really does not matter who it is but they must have excellent local knowledge and experience and be trustworthy. I can already hear you asking "But how do I know if they are being honest with me especially if this person has a strong interest in selling the property" Again an easy one; Just ask for contact details of a few (minimum 4 or 5) other buyers that they have helped recently so that you can check whether former customers/clients are happy with what they have done for them. Just like on eBay! If they are not prepared to give you a few references then either they have something to hide or they have not done this many times before and in either case they should not be relied on. If dealing with a large agency and relying on information from the negotiator/salesman it is important to ask for references from his or her former buyers rather than those of the company generally as practice can vary from person to person within the same company. You need to know if you can rely on what this particular individual is telling you.
Another common sense way to find out about some of these important "searches" issues is to ask the neighbours. Neighbours usually know a lot more about local issues that might affect the property than anyone else and most people are happy to talk to their prospective new neighbours about potential problems so why not ask them?
You should still use a local lawyer or someone else competent to assist you with the conveyancing and title checking elements of the transfer of ownership process and for the all important registration of your new title deed. But remember that "searches" of the kind performed by lawyers in the UK do not happen here.
3) Relax and enjoy it
After completing the purchase process and you have become the proud owner of your new home in Spain try to adjust to the way of things here and don't expect everything to be quite as clear cut and tidy as you are used to back home. Some people don't manage this and as a result are never really happy here. Others go with the flow and accept or even enjoy the fact that a simple visit to an official in the town hall might take rather longer than expected, perhaps because while you are waiting patiently said official is having a long chat with his friend or cousin about matters not directly relating to his work! Most foreigner's guides to property purchasing in Spain suggest that you need to know a great deal about taxes, inheritance law, the rules of your community of owners and much much more. However I subscribe to the "little knowledge/dangerous thing" theory and even if you do manage to understand all of the rules and regulations that apply to a given situation it is quite likely that local practice and interpretation of the laws/rules by local officials will still render your understanding inappropriate. Better to engage the help of someone locally who really understands how to get things done. The fact is that Spain has very many laws, rules and regulations to cover just about every possible situation that you can imagine but it is customary to pay scant attention to quite a lot of them. The trick is knowing which ones should be taken seriously and this only comes with experience and also varies from place to place depending on the local official's interpretation of the rules and laws. A good example of this is the daft situation we have in our area where the local property registry considers the mortgage deed of a well known English lending institution to be illegal and they refuse to register it. Interestingly, the same document is entirely acceptable to the property registry in Malaga, Nerja and other places all along the Costa del Sol but the local registrar says it is illegal so in our area it is! Net result, no mortgages available from this company for property purchase in our area.
Another example of local practice not being entirely as you might expect is an experience my wife Margaret and I had whilst traveling to Madrid by car. One of our daughters was on holiday from UK university and found herself driving us at over the speed limit when she was stopped by a traffic policeman. After he had established that Katie did not have her licence with her (Obligatory when driving in Spain) and that she was living in the UK, he asked whose car it was. Fortunately, we were all traveling together, so Margaret was sitting in the back and could easily confirm that the Spanish registered car was indeed hers. He then suggested that maybe it would be easier for him and better for us if he recorded Margaret as the driver (She did have her licence with her) and proceeded to book her! ....thus avoiding Katie having a fine for not carrying her licence with her! I can't imagine that happening on the M25.
It is these little idiosyncrasies that many of us like about southern Spain. Moving here is like stepping back in time and much of the country is still rather old fashioned in a thoroughly nice sort of way.
My recommendation is that once you have successfully completed a property purchase just concentrate on enjoying life here and find reliable people to help you through the inevitable minor hassles that you will come across. Even a simple matter like buying a second hand car can drive you crazy if you try and handle the paperwork yourself. Go to a local specialist "gestor" and he will do all that is necessary, for a small fee of course!
Return to our introduction about procedures and costs for Spanish Property Sales
Spanish Property Buyers Guide 2
Spanish Property Sales - Purchase Costs
Spanish Property Sales - Procedures