Selling Privately or Through an Agency in Spain

This is an article by an estate agency about whether sellers need an estate agency, so treat every sentence with appropriate suspicion. What we can do honestly is show you the arithmetic and the workload, and be clear about the one situation where selling privately is obviously the right call. Then you decide.

The arithmetic, on a real number

Our Torrevieja book sits at a median asking price of €260,000 across 250 live listings. Take that as the worked example. Agency commission in Spain is negotiated rather than fixed, so let us assume a fee of 5% plus IVA. You should confirm the actual figure with any agency before signing anything.

The table is the whole argument. Selling privately wins if you achieve close to the same price. It loses the moment the buyer extracts a discount larger than the fee you saved, and buyers who deliberately seek out private listings are usually doing so precisely to extract that discount. They know you are not paying commission, and they expect to share the saving.

These numbers use an assumed fee on a median asking price. Your property is not the median and your fee is whatever you negotiate. Run the same four rows with your own figures before deciding, and use the full cost of selling property in Spain for the rest of the deductions, because commission is not the only one.

What selling privately in Spain actually involves

Not a criticism, just a list. If you are comfortable with all of it, private selling is genuinely viable.

• Portal listings. The main Spanish portals accept private sellers. You pay for placement and you manage the enquiries yourself.
• Photography and a written description. Ideally in more than one language, because your buyer pool on this coast is not only Spanish.
• Fielding enquiries. Including the time-wasters, the tyre-kickers and the agents phoning to ask if you would like to list with them.
• Qualifying buyers. Are they cash or mortgage? Do they have an NIE? Is a bank valuation going to be needed? This is the step most private sellers skip, and it is the one that costs months.
• Viewings, in person. Repeatedly, at short notice, often in a second language.
• Negotiating. Directly with the buyer, with no intermediary to absorb the awkward parts.
• The deposit contract. See the next section. This is the dangerous one.
• Coordinating completion. Lawyer, notary appointment, utilities, community certificate, energy certificate, and the tax retentions if you are non-resident.

The one document to be genuinely careful with

The contrato de arras, the deposit contract, is where private sales go wrong. There is more than one legal flavour, and they have very different consequences. The common form, arras penitenciales, lets either side withdraw at a defined cost: the buyer forfeits the deposit, the seller repays double. Other forms can leave you obliged to complete, with the buyer able to sue for performance.

Sign the wrong one, or an ambiguous one drafted by the buyer's side, and you can find yourself locked into a sale you wanted out of, or paying twice the deposit back. Whatever you decide about agencies, do not draft or sign a deposit contract without a Spanish lawyer. That is the single highest-value professional fee in the whole transaction, and it applies whichever route you take.

The non-resident problem

If you live in another country, private selling means either flying in for viewings on a buyer's schedule or handing a key to a neighbour and hoping. Neither works well over a six-month marketing period. The practical alternative is a poder notarial, a power of attorney allowing a lawyer here to sign on your behalf, which solves completion but not viewings. Selling property in Spain as a foreigner covers this in detail.

This is where the honest balance tips for most of our sellers. It is not that they could not sell privately. It is that they cannot be here on 24 hours' notice, and the buyer who wanted a viewing on Thursday has seen eleven other properties by Friday.

When selling privately is clearly right

We will say this plainly because it is true and because you should not pay for an introduction that already happened: if you already have your buyer, do not pay a full commission. A neighbour who has always wanted your unit, a tenant who wants to buy, a family member, a friend of a friend from the community: in all of those cases the introduction is done, and what you need is a lawyer to draft the arras and run completion, not an agency to market the property.

Private selling also stacks up if you live here permanently, speak enough Spanish to negotiate, have time on your hands, are not in a hurry, and your property is genuinely distinctive rather than one of forty near-identical units in the same urbanisation.

When an agency earns its fee

The reverse cases, equally plainly. An agency is worth paying when you are not in the country; when your property is one of many similar units and needs to be actively pushed rather than passively listed; when your buyer pool is international and needs the listing in several languages; when you need someone to qualify buyers so you are not showing the property to people who cannot complete; and when you want a professional taking the negotiation, because negotiating directly with someone who has just criticised your kitchen is harder than it sounds.

What to ask before you sign anything

• What is the fee, in writing, including IVA, and when is it payable?
• Is it exclusive, and if so for how long, and what happens if you find your own buyer during that period?
• Does the agency also charge the buyer? Ask directly.
• What is included: professional photography, translated descriptions, which portals, who holds keys?
• How often will you be told what is happening, whether or not there is good news?
• What is the notice period to withdraw?

An agency that answers all six without hesitating is one worth listing with. One that gets vague about the buyer-side fee is not.

Whichever route you take, you are one card in a grid

This is what a buyer's search results look like: four properties in the same Torrevieja neighbourhood, side by side, judged in about four seconds each.

Three resales between €125,000 and €150,000, and a new build at €310,000 with a developer's marketing budget behind it. That is the shelf. Whether an agency or you personally put your card on it, the card has to hold its own against the others, which is really an argument about photographs and price, not about commission.

Decide with real numbers, not a guess

Before you choose either route, get a realistic figure for what your property would actually achieve. Our free valuation gives you that with no obligation, and you are entirely free to take the number and sell privately. We would rather you sold well than not at all. Read how to sell property in Spain for the full process, and why your Spanish property is not selling if it is already listed and stuck. To see what your equity buys back into, browse Torrevieja or the full Costa Blanca property book.