confused

Hi.. If you have a good lawyer (independent of the estate agent) they will do the necessary checks and will advise when you can pay a deposit... Youcould find a fantastic property which does not currently have all its paperwork but the legalisation is achievable and can be handled by the lawyer. We had to wait for all of the legalities for our property to be resolved and it has been well worth the wait.... A year!  Not many would take that long.. There were particular circumstances with ours. 

There are many lovely properties and perhaps the current owners were caught out through poor guidance or lack of research. You may of course find a property which is all in order from day one...the UK government has a list of lawyers for each area and that's where we found ours. 

Good luck! 

I hope that helps

Regards Jane

I recently bought a house through a well known English family firm, using a well and widely recommended English conveyancer.  The house had 'connected  water and electricity and was on 'urban land' it said in the particulars (and confirmed by the conveyancer.), should I wish to build on, or make a swimming pool.  I put down a deposit , checked that all was right and then paid the balance. None of the above was true, there is no local piped water, but I had a leaking tank, the electricity had been disconnected years ago and the land was not urban so I am spending a lot of money and unable to proceed with building for at least a year to try and make some of it so. So to be honest can one ever be sure?

I had a very similar experience with a local English family estate agent in your area.

Probably the actual owner of the firm is very efficient, but some of his family members left a little to be desired. 

Example: 

I was told water supply was drinkable, then told it was just agricultural but I could get a filter fitted to make it drinkable in the house. Then another family member in the agency said that this was wrong and that the other person often got confused.

They drew up a preliminary contract so I could pay my initial deposit, the first time the address on the document did not correspond to the country property in question but to a village home. 

The second contract had the wrong names of the selling family.

The third had just one seller’s name with random signatures of the other two people who were supposedly joint owners. Only one of them was actually present in the area and no mention of a proxy/delega was mentioned.

The lawyer, one of those on the list suggested by the Agent, said it was all okay. 

They even produced a surveyors report on which a particular area was labelled “Aparcamiento” referring to a carport I had seen. They said that the Land Registry had used this word which meant apartment so it could be converted to an apartment with no further permission needed. Aparcamiento means parking.  I have a limited rusty knowledge of Spanish but was able to translate the Spanish correctly. 

I asked for the precise address so I could view the property area on my own and I was shown a very vague photocopy of the map area and told “it’s in that area”!!!!

So my experience of the Agency was simply that they were trying to pull the wool over my eyes, assuming my total ignorance of Spanish, or anything else for that matter.

I ran away, but the property was sold shortly afterwards. 

Hi Janice

Thanks for the info,it appears to be a reoccurring theme and we are finding it all a bit fatiguing,we assumed that the process of finding a property,falling in love with it would be a happy process but all these negative replies are definitely putting a dampner on the.It appears that you cannot trust anyone in the housing market system and are constantly wondering if you are getting ripped off,not what we had hoped for but will keep trying.

It certainly looks this way but I assure you there are lots of highly efficient estate agents out there who are only too happy to get you exactly what you are looking for. I shall be back in Murcia and Valencia to see a few properties next week with some other agents. Just trust your instincts and question everything!

Good luck with your future plans. Once you get it all sorted, you’ll be pleased you did it all.

Janice

Hi,we are in the process of buying a property in Albox built on rustic land. It has water and electric connected. We were told by the agent that it had the legal paperwork (AFO) We signed the reservation contract. Our solicitor found out it did not have an AFO. The owners applied to the town hall for an AFO. 5 months later we are still waiting. The town hall will grant the AFO but there needs to be septic tank installed beforehand. The agent has been pushing us to complete before the AFO and said our solicitor can hold back funds for it. We said NO we will wait as there are no guarantees. The agents told us the septic tank was installed in November last year but it was only installed last week. You need to be firm and not be seen as a push over. They are trying to sell you a dream and most people will go ahead without much knowledge. Our solicitor did not pass any funds across at the time. The 10% deposit is held by the vendors solicitor. We have a deadline in our contract so if it doesn’t get granted an AFO by the deadline we get our money back. Make sure you instruct the right solicitor and not a conveyancer. 

Hi.  We have also recently purchased in the area.  We used Voss Homes, found them excellent and professional, and they do a very thorough check on the property.  For the legal side we used Amanda at Alo services, brilliant service and again checks everything.  Hope that helps, we were nervous you do hear horror stories but I can't thank them enough for all their help.

I think it matters who you speak to in an agency. Some people speak very highly about the agency with which I had problems but I dealt with a family member of the owner, who gave me misleading or totally unclear information and even put the wrong property address on the preliminary contract!!! 

So, beware of the nice guy who’s family or staff are not on the same level and who cannot be trusted in what is an expensive investment!

I am glad that you had a good experience with them.  We are all human and can make mistakes, or be overworked and   be unable to  be as meticulous as we would like, so I would recommend being ultra cautious and taking nothing for granted when making a Spanish purchase, regardless of a good reputaion.