Property Directory
To go to our Estate Agent directory for links to: Estate Agents in Southern Spain and the E.U.
Buying property.
If you are thinking of buying property here in Spain there are a few things you should be aware of.
Firstly your budget. Whatever it is, you should allow 10% above the purchase price for the tax and fees. Although it hardly ever comes to this, but this is a good guide for what it may cost you. On an older property add 7%, the difference I shall explain :
Tax on property here in Spain Is high, because the Spanish people don’t want to pay it. The Spanish people work with what is called black money. Lets say for example you want to buy a property for 100,000 euros. What you pay when you sign for the deeds will be between 50% and 100% of the value of the property( this will depend on how new the property is or when it was last valued) and you will pay this in the Notaries office. After you pay, and before the deeds are given to you, you must pay the remainder in cash (Black money). Say, for arguments sake, you pay 80% of the property value at the Notaries office. This will be 80,000 euros , this is the sum that you and the vendor will be taxed on. The remaining 20% or 20,000 in this case will be paid in cash and you and the vendor will not pay tax on it. The Government knows this happens and to compensate for this, property tax is high.
Don't be put off buying a property because of this. This is how the system works here.
New builds off plan.
Another thing you must be aware of when buying a new property here in spain, is that newly built properties don't usually have a kitchen fitted. This is left for you to decide about the style and cost. As you know, a new kitchen can be expensive. So if you are thinking of buying a new property find out if a kitchen is included in the price. If not budget accordingly. If you have found your dream home, but need a kitchen fitted. Please go to our contact page. Email us with your requirements and we may be able to help find that new kitchen for you, and have it fitted at an affordable price. At this moment we only deal with the Costa Tropical reigon. but we are hoping to have links to tradesmen in other reigons soon.
Other trades we can supply are: Plumbers, Electricians, Builders, Mechanics, Carpenters and we can even have a website built for you.
If you are in need of any of the above trades, please contact us
Buyers check list
Selling a property in Spain
When you resell your Spanish property, you will have to pay capital gains tax. This can be as much as 35% if you are non resident or 15% if you are resident here in
Buyer beware
When we were looking to buy here, we found what we thought was the perfect property for us. It was a ruin with 5000 square meters of land. The owner said it had a reform license and he had plans for the new building drawn by an architect. Everything looked good, but he said we could not see the reform license as he had lost it but he assured us he would find it for us and that the property had one. We spent one week thinking we need look no further, but still he was not forthcoming with the license. We decided to employ an architect and he met us at the property. Within minuts of seeing the property the architect informed us that the ruin was unlikely to have a reform license because the structure of the existing building was beyond repair. The architect told us that the only thing we could do was to flatten the ruin and build a new house from scratch. His next question was,”how much land was included with the ruin” because in that particular area we would need at least 20,000 square meters to obtain the paperwork, to build a new property.
We decided against buying and looked elseware.
Two years later we learnt the property had been sold, to an English couple. To our knowledge, now nearly 4 years on, they are still waiting for permission to reform the ruin.
Had we taken the word of the vendor, we would now be the proud owners of 5000 sq meters of worthless land and be out of pocket to the tune of nearly 80,000 euros.
Check and check again its worth it.
Property here in
Some vendors will try to force you to buy quickly by telling you that they will only hold the asking price for the property for 1 or 2 days and then it will rise. Don’t be fooled by this, all they want to do is rush you into a decision. The property will probably still be for sale at the same price for months. Also you may find the exact same property at another estate agents for less money. This is not uncommon here as property can be advertised in many different estate agents and each one will have a different price for the same property.
Currency Converter
So you can work out the price of the house you have seen (in any currency) click here for a currency converter