12 Pitfalls of Buying Property in Spain

Buying a house in Spain is not dangerous. It is unfamiliar, which is a different thing, and unfamiliar is where money goes missing. The conveyancing system here is actually stricter than the UK or Irish one in several respects: a public notary checks the deed, the land registry is authoritative, and the sale is recorded the same day. What it does not do is protect you from the things you did not ask about.

We sell across the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol, and we see the same twelve failures repeat. Here they are, what each one costs, and the specific document or question that catches it.

The twelve, at a glance

Pitfalls 1–4: the legal ones that can cost you the property

1. Buying before you have seen the nota simple

This is the one. In Spain, charges follow the property. If the seller has an unpaid mortgage, a court embargo, a tax lien or an easement registered against the title, that liability arrives with the keys unless it is cleared at the notary. A nota simple is a short extract from the land registry that tells you who owns it, how big the registry thinks it is, and every charge sitting on it. It costs a few euros and takes a day.

Read it for three things: the owner names must match the people signing; the registered surface must be in the same universe as the property you walked around; and the charges section must be empty or explicitly cleared on completion. If the registry says 62 m² and the brochure says 90 m², someone has closed in a terrace. That is pitfall 4.

2. Letting the other side's lawyer handle it

You will be offered a lawyer. Often by the agent, sometimes by the developer, occasionally by the seller. It will be framed as convenience and it usually is cheaper. It is also the moment nobody in the transaction is exclusively on your side. Appoint an independent abogado with no relationship to the seller, the developer or us. Ask them directly, in writing, whether they act for any other party in the deal. A firm that hesitates has answered.

3. Signing the arras contract without understanding which arras it is

Spanish law recognises more than one kind of deposit contract, and they behave very differently when someone wants out. The one most buyers assume they are signing (buyer walks and loses the deposit, seller walks and returns double) is arras penitenciales, and it only applies if the contract says so. If the contract is silent, the courts generally read it as something else entirely, and the other side may be able to force the sale through instead of just keeping the money. We wrote this up properly in the arras contract guide, because it is the single clause most worth twenty minutes of your attention.

4. Assuming what is built is what is legal

Enclosed terraces, roof rooms, pools, garage conversions and casitas are extremely common and frequently unregistered. An unregistered build is not always a disaster: many can be regularised, and some are simply too old to be actionable. What it does change is what you can insure, mortgage and sell. Ask for the deed (escritura), the catastro plan and the certificate of occupation (in the Valencia region, the certificado de segunda ocupación) and compare all three against the property. A discrepancy is a negotiating point, not automatically a walk-away. Not knowing about it is the pitfall.

Pitfalls 5–8: the money ones

5. Declaring a lower price at the notary

You may still be offered this. Decline it. The tax office values properties independently and can issue a supplementary assessment (a complementaria) years later with interest. And because your capital gain when you sell is calculated from the declared purchase price, an artificially low figure today is a larger tax bill tomorrow. There is no version of this that ends well for the buyer.

6. Budgeting the asking price and nothing else

In the Valencia region a resale carries 10% transfer tax (ITP). A new build carries 10% IVA plus 1.5% stamp duty (AJD). On top of either, add notary, land registry, your lawyer and, if you are borrowing, a valuation. All in, plan for roughly 12–13% on top of the price. We have itemised every line, with a worked example, in the true cost of buying property in Spain. Do that sum before you offer, not after.

7. Treating the community as background noise

Most Costa Blanca property sits inside a comunidad de propietarios. Three things matter and all three are obtainable: the certificate confirming the seller owes nothing (unpaid fees can follow the property), the minutes of recent meetings (a derrama for a new roof or lift can already have been voted and will be yours), and the statutes, which may restrict short lets, pets or exterior changes. If you are buying with holiday letting in mind, read the statutes before the arras. See community fees in Spain explained.

8. Paying off-plan stage payments with nothing behind them

Spanish law requires a developer to hold buyers' off-plan stage payments in a dedicated account and to back them with a bank guarantee or insurance policy, so that your money is returned if the build is not delivered. This protection only works if the paperwork exists. Ask for the individual guarantee certificate for each payment, in your name, before you transfer. Not a page from the brochure: the certificate itself. More in buying off-plan in Spain.

Pitfalls 9–12: the ones you only feel after completion

9. Leaving the currency to chance

Your price is fixed in euros the day you sign the arras. Your money is not, and completion is usually weeks or months later. That gap is real exposure, and on a mid-market purchase it can move by more than your entire legal bill. You do not need to be clever about it. You need to decide, deliberately, whether to fix the rate or accept the risk. Our currency guide explains spreads and forward contracts without the sales pitch.

10. Skipping the survey because "nobody does that here"

It is true that a Spanish purchase does not require a survey. It is not true that you should not have one. An arquitecto técnico will inspect for a modest fee and finds the things that photographs hide: damp at the base of walls, water ingress on flat roofs and solariums, pool structure, electrics that predate current standards, and insulation that effectively does not exist on many pre-2007 builds. Our property inspection checklist is what we hand buyers before a second viewing.

11. Not asking about water

The Costa Blanca is dry for most of the year and then, in autumn, occasionally is not. Low-lying plots, properties beside a rambla (a watercourse that is dry almost all the time), and underground garages are the places where that matters. There is public flood hazard mapping you can check against a specific plot before you sign, and neighbours who will tell you the truth in thirty seconds. We set out exactly how to do it in flood risk on the Costa Blanca.

12. Having no plan for the annual costs

IBI (council tax), rubbish collection, community fees, home insurance, utility standing charges, and, for non-residents, an annual imputed income tax return even in a year you never rented it out. None of these are large individually. Together they are a real number, and they surprise people in the first February. Property taxes and annual costs in Spain has the full list.

The two documents that catch most of this

If you only ever do two things: get the nota simple, and get the community certificate plus statutes. Between them they cover pitfalls 1, 4 (partly), 7 and a good deal of 12, and both can be in your inbox within a week of a viewing at trivial cost. Everything else on this list is a question you ask out loud.

One more thing worth saying plainly. Fraud is rare in the regulated part of this market and common in the unregulated part. If you are being asked to send a deposit to a personal account, sign something not in your own language, or move before a document arrives, stop. Spanish property scams covers the patterns. And before any of it, you will need an NIE number.

What careful buying looks like on real stock

These are four live resale properties across our book, from a one-bed townhouse to a penthouse. Different price, identical process: nota simple, community certificate, deed against catastro, independent lawyer, itemised cost sheet.

You can see everything currently on our books under properties for sale, or narrow to property for sale in Torrevieja, where we hold 250 live listings split evenly between new build and resale.

Before you make an offer

The best protection in a Spanish purchase is boring: an independent lawyer, the nota simple, the community paperwork, a written cost sheet and a decision about currency. None of it is expensive and all of it happens before you are committed. The full sequence, in order, is in the complete guide to buying property in Spain.

If you would rather have a person walk you through it against a specific property, tell us your budget and what you are looking at below. We will tell you what we would check first, including when we think you should walk away.