Buying a house in Spain, the process.

Paperwork is massively important when buying (or selling) a property in Spain, but there are 2 crucial documents.

Firstly, there is the 'Escritura' which details the property that is for sale and secondly, the 'Nota Simple' which shows who owns the land/property and whether there are any charges against it. It is advisable to get a copy of the Nota Simple as close to the purchase being concluded as possible to avoid any late charges being added.

Normally, when an agent takes a property on the market for sale they ask for a copy of the 'Escritura' to be able to describe the property they are marketing correctly, so they are able to send this copy to the purchasers solicitor, once an offer has been accepted by the seller.

So, what happens next. You've found a house you like and your offers been accepted.

Normally, once an offer has been accepted a deposit of €3,000 is paid by the purchaser to their solicitor. This takes the property off the market. The solicitor will hold the payment until all the paperwork is checked and deemed ok and then the deposit is passed on the the seller. It is at this stage that any extra items to be included in the contract should be added. If, at this stage the owner decided to sell to someone else, they would need to refund you twice the holding deposit. This tends to avoid any problems of gazumping. If the purchaser was to pull out at this stage they would forfeit their deposit, unless something was wrong with the paperwork.

This seems like a pretty good system to make sure both sides don't mess the other about.

So, we are currently at the stage that we have paid our deposit to our solicitor and he is now checking through the paperwork and hopefully, in a couple of days, we will get a call from him to say everything is ok, at which stage we will know that we are definitely buying a house and we can start planning the next stage of our adventure in Spain.

Exciting and scary at the same time.

More soon.