At the time of writing, the amount of borrowing that banks are prepared to provide varies considerably. Equally, the computation of what they will lend with regard to a given mortgage in Spain is difficult to determine as anything more than a generality. The preferred method for banks to establish the viability of providing a mortgage in Spain is to [...]
Unfortunately, negotiating the purchase price of your intended property in Spain is not always simple. This is because the seller may have two sale ‘prices’: 1· The declared price. This is the sale price that will be placed upon the Escritura (deeds) and that will be the price upon which you will pay purchase tax (7%) and upon which the [...]
Few things are more apt to cause stress than an attempt to ‘call’ a market. It is something that my friends at Currency Direct have to do daily and it is something for which I have nothing but admiration. They know that, one way or another, they have to make a prediction about what will happen in the future – [...]
Stressing the importance of ‘location’ has become an unwelcome cliché. However, it cannot be stressed often enough – as it will define your future life absolutely. If you make a mistake with your choice of location within Spain then it may terminally harm your dreams of a new life and lead to a rapid and embarrassing retreat to the UK. [...]
The problem for you if you wish to let your Spanish property is that being properly registered can be an expensive process. If you are resident in Spain then you will have to become Spanish tax resident and register your letting business. This will involve inevitably the help of a lawyer (abogado) or tax consultant (asesor fiscal) and result in: [...]
Rural land (also known as rústico or no urbanizable) encompasses most of the land in Spain and is essentially agricultural land. However, in property terms, it means that it is land in Spain that is severely restricted for building puposes. Unfortunately, this has been abused by the Spanish who have built many properties illegally on land classified as rural. Existing [...]
To know what the term ‘urbanizado’ means is of vital importance to anyone thinking of buying land or property in Spain. Indeed, it is so fundamental – that you would be literally crazy to buy a Spanish property without fully understanding its significance… ‘Urbanizado’ is the term that describes land in Spain upon which it is legal to build – [...]
The best advice that any Briton can be given, even before he thinks of buying property in Spain, is: ‘recognise, from the start that Spanish land law and its operation is very different from that of the UK’. This may seem an obvious assertion but many of the problems experienced by UK buyers in Spain stem from a mistaken belief [...]