A while ago I spoke with a Dutch buyer who had spent weeks reading everything he could find online about buying property in Spain. Forums, blog posts, horror stories: outstanding debts on properties, parts of a house that were never officially registered, buyers who found out too late. By the time he reached out to us, he was more anxious than when he’d started. He’d contacted three agents beforehand,...
Most buyers arrive expecting the process to feel foreign in every sense. Different language. Different legal system. A bureaucracy that seems designed to test your patience before you've even found a property. And there's some truth in that — buying in Spain as a non-Spanish buyer does involve extra steps that a Spanish national doesn't face. But the anxiety around those steps is almost always larger...
The first time I did a live video viewing for a client abroad, it was a disaster. The buyers were in the Netherlands, excited, slightly nervous, waiting on the other end of the line. I was standing inside a Spanish apartment — one of those older buildings with walls half a metre thick. The moment I started the call, the signal died. I moved rooms. It got worse. The image broke up, froze, broke up...