We’ve bought a house, maybe.
How to buy a house in Spain, part 1
There’s not much that’s as stressful as trying to make an electronic bank transfer of €15,000 on your phone, carefully typing in the correct account numbers on an app you haven’t used before, checking and double-checking as one does, while beside and opposite you in the tiny boardroom of a real estate office five people are having an animated conversation in both ears at once in a language you’re only just beginning to learn.
For a couple of months we’d been trawling online sites for a place that suited us. We’d only been in Jerez for six months but we could already tell it was the best town for us – perfect walkable size, great food, lots of space, relatively few tourists. Hot as balls in summer, yes, but if you get the right place and modify your lifestyle to avoid the worst of the heat then you can get by just fine – plus the early mornings and the summer evenings are simply stunning.
How to hunt for houses in Jerez
The real estate purchase process is fairly similar regardless of where you are in Spain (though we did find a major difference in the approach down here in Andalucía, which I’ll get to a bit later). Idealista and Fotocasa are arguably the best places to start your search for a property. Local inmobiliarias (real estate agents) sometimes have listings on their own sites too. But you’ll usually find that a single property is listed on multiple platforms, and it’s not unusual to find a different agent listed as the primary contact.
If we saw something we liked we sent a message via the website’s chat feature, in Spanish (with the help of Google Translate). We felt it important to include in the message that:
a) we’d like to see the property at a time convenient for you
b) we’ve just moved here from Australia and our Spanish is still quite bad, so please reply using this chat or WhatsApp so we can translate your message
c) we are cash buyers.
This last one, I think, was probably the clincher when it came to soliciting a response.
Our hit rate was pretty good. In our town, at least, there were plenty of agents who’d get back to us quite promptly (though many did not). Communication being the complex beast it is, there were also some who missed or ignored our request to chat via message and we’d receive a call that turned out confusing for everybody. All part of the fun.
The inspection
We’d meet at a location near the property (they’re unlikely to give you the precise address lest you dare proceed to contact the owner directly), walk the rest of the way, and the inspection would begin.
With the owner shadowing you every step of the way.
This was a shock to us. In Australia, the buyer and the seller never meet, with the agent managing the whole process, presumably in an attempt to justify their commission. But in Spain it’s normal for the owner not only to be home but to actively participate in the tour. It kind of makes sense in a way – no one’s pinching my Holy Week memorabilia, thanks very much – but it sure is a little awkward at times. We looked at six properties in total and in four of them we were shadowed by the owner.
Andalucía is different from the rest of Spain when it comes to real estate. it’s common that the agents here charge the buyer a commission too – just for showing you the house! (providing you end up buying it). It’s around 3% of the purchase price plus tax; you sign a form to agree to the commission when you attend the viewing. It seems absurd until you think about it a little: the price of any given property is more or less made up on the spot anyway, and what seems like an unjustifiable burden on the buyer is more or less reflected in the actual price you end up paying. It’s just a different model and no one here thinks it’s odd. Of course, it’s possible to negotiate the rate – but I suggest you do that on first contact with the agent. We found out the hard way that asking for a rate reduction after we’d made an offer wasn’t gonna fly.
Recruiting an agent to help
While she couldn’t speak English, Elena, the agent we met on our very first inspection, was perfectly happy to listen to our bad Spanish and/or communicate via text. We got by just fine. At the end of our first inspection she told us that if we were to see something else we liked on Idealista to let her know and she would arrange the inspection for us.
This happened several times, and on each of those visits we were joined by a second agent, presumably the original lister. My guess is that if that happens, both agents simply split the commission. Not a bad system, really, and it worked for us as we now had someone actively searching for properties on our behalf. In this way we arranged inspections of the next several properties that looked promising (but not quite right for us, thank you).
Until we found a place on a trendy, shady street in the Centre of Jerez and messaged for an inspection on our own (sorry Elena). Our Jerezana friend Marta, whom you met in a previous post, offered to come with us, for which we are eternally grateful. She’s an architect, after all.
So there we were with Marta, Pedro the agent, and Pedro the owner (no relation) cautiously walking around a very small townhouse, getting in each other’s way and utterly failing to communicate to any meaningful degree – Marta, Pedro and Pedro excepted.
A few days later we visited the place again to be sure it was for us and soon decided to have a crack at buying it.
Making an offer
In Australia, the offer-and-counter-offer process happens 100 per cent on paper. The agent prepares a full contract, with both parties’ names and a list of inclusions, and writes in the offer being made by the seller. She takes that to the owner, who, unless the offer meets their needs right away, makes a counter offer; the agent scribbles out the original figure and writes in the new one. The cycle repeats until someone gives in.
In Spain everyone talks at once until an agreement is reached. It can take hours but you have to admit it’s a lot simpler and is usually settled on the same day, if not the same hour.
It wasn’t quite like that with us, not being able to have that discussion face to face. We did it all via text in WhatsApp, ultimately securing the place for about €14,000 below the advertised price, which equates to about €7000 below once the 3% commission is accounted for. We also worked out a date for the settlement, in our case about four months hence, which suited everyone. Part of the reason for the long settlement period was the approaching months of July and August, the holiday season.
A visit to the real estate office
The next step was a sit-down with the agent in his office so that he could explain two important documents to us, paragraph by paragraph. For an hour. This is where, if you don’t have a Marta, you might need to consider engaging a lawyer or even just a Spanish friend who speaks English to come with you. If you’re good with Google Translate you might be able to get by without help, but it would suck.
Marta and Pedro the agent in a rare moment of not speaking
The two documents are the nota simple and the contrato de arras.
The nota simple is a report that includes a verified official description of the property that is for sale, how much is owed on it, that kind of thing.
The Contrato de arras is the deposit contract. It’s just a basic agreement that confirms that the owner is prepared to sell the house to you, plus a bunch of descriptive content. It also details the size of the deposit and the bank details of the recipient. Oddly, in Spain the deposit is paid to the owner himself, not to a legal firm or into some kind of escrow account. This surprised us. We were imagining on how many occasions in Spain the seller changes their mind on the sale and disappears over the horizon with your deposit, and good luck getting it back. The law actually states that in the event the seller decides not to go through with the sale he is obliged to pay you back twice the deposit amount.
We were, however, assured by multiple parties including Marta that this is perfectly normal. Spanish people trust one another and the thought that there might be a problem simply doesn’t arise.
We took the paperwork home and also asked for a PDF version, which I uploaded to Google Translate and converted to English (it takes seconds). A few minor corrections were needed but it wasn't long before we had a contract that we, and the owners, were happy with.
So here I was about a week later trying to perform my instant bank transfer of thousands of euros to the owner’s account, while all around me chaos reigned in the form of Spaniards loudly discussing family, weather, the trouble with young people these days, festivals and table cloths.
We had all just signed the contract minutes earlier; this is obviously necessary before any money changes hands.
When I’d successfully made the transfer I emailed the confirmation to Pedro the agent, and a bit of printing and stapling later, it was done.
We owned a house. Maybe.
Stand by for part 2 (mid September).
