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Spain Q&A

Frequently Asked Questions

Spain is consistently the most popular destination not only for tourist visitors from the UK, but also for the overseas property market. Despite the premature reports of the demise of the Spanish property market, there are still areas of growth.

High end property appears to remain strongly in demand, and while there are some indications that there are fewer budget properties being purchased on the Costa del Sol, there have recently been reports of something of a mini-boom in the “Costa Oriental”, or the eastern end of the Costa del Sol.

Inevitably, with this amount of property being acquired by British buyers in Spain, there are a huge amount of questions that are raised as a consequence of the buying process. Below is a selection of the most common queries:

Inspection trips

I have paid a deposit to reserve a property until we go on an inspection tour the end of November. The firm we are dealing with has asked us to sign a preliminary contract and send now. Is this correct? I was under the impression that our €1,000 would be enough.

I would always advise against handing over any kind of deposit or reservation fee without having any kind of paperwork to protect you. To be honest, at the moment, there is nothing besides an ethereal, verbal agreement in principle between yourselves and the developer. Although I am not suggesting that this would be the case, but until you have a contract in place, there is nothing to stop the company you are dealing with from disappearing with your cash, and there have been instances of this happening when people have dealt with unscrupulous companies in the past. If you are happy with the document, have had it checked by an independent legal expert to make sure it allows you to have the deposit returned should the development or plot not be what you have been led to believe. In the normal run of things, I would recommend that you should visit the development and plot before you commit to putting any money down, but in this instance, you may be best advised to make sure you get hold of some paperwork in order to protect yourselves and your initial deposit as far a possible.

Currency

Can you advise me the best way to move money from England to Spain to get the best exchange rate?

The one piece of advice I would give you is NOT to do this through your High Street bank. There are a host of specialist currency exchange companies that deal specifically with the transfer of funds for the purchase of overseas property. These should give you a far superior rate to the banks, potentially saving you thousands of pounds. The other advantage is that you are able to fix the exchange rate for a specified point in the future - this means that if there is a favourable exchange rate at the moment you can protect yourself against the possible currency fluctuations for up to 18 months. The downside is that in the same period of time, you do not benefit from any rises in the exchange rate.

Deposits

Is it normal when buying in Spain to pay the deposit direct to the vendor and not the solicitor?

This often depends on whether you are buying a resale or a new-build property, but you are always much safer to have the money lodged with a lawyer in this kind of situation. If the vendor isn't keen on this, you might want to ask why. Although it can be tempting to try to save costs where you can, you will leave yourself open to additional future costs and stress if you try to complete important parts of the process without the due legal attention.

More pages

Page 1: Frequently Asked Questions
Page 2: Investment
Page 3: Co-buying

Related Articles

• Buying a Property in Spain
• Guide to the Costa del Sol
• Guide to the Costa Blanca

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