What are the Pros and Cons of buying property in Spain?

My partner and I are thinking of purchasing a property along with daughter and son in law,in Quasada, on a joint venture.Basicly what are the pros and cons when purchasing a property in Spain,I understand it works a lot different there than in the U.K
Please can someone enlighten us, regarding fees etc
Thank-you kind regards
From

Richard P Candler

Fees are around 13 percent of purchase price and buying is easy a good agent will do everything for you as far as joint venture I am not sure how you would stand for ownership I would contact a good solicitor to find out, I would also find out what happens sould one of the patners enconters dificulty in the relationship where you stand as this would concern me! sorry to sound a bit gloomy on this one.

If you were doing the same thing in the u.k. what would you do to ensure the various individuals concerned were covered ???? Penny dropped yet?
Same thing in Spain..

Richard Paul Candler wrote:My partner and I are thinking of purchasing a property along with daughter and son in law,in Quasada, on a joint venture.Basicly what are the pros and cons when purchasing a property in Spain,I understand it works a lot different there than in the U.K
Please can someone enlighten us, regarding fees etc
Thank-you kind regards
From

Richard P Candler

Buying property doesn't really work an awful lot differently than the UK, it's just the system of doing things and certain other things you need to have that are different . As in the UK you need a good recommended Solicitor (with a good website and online access!) who should lead you through the process and get everything right for you legally. If they were like ours (and you can see all the recommended ones on this forum, by using the search facility top right and make your mind up who to contact for a quote from what you read) they should be able to give you a list of costs and also answer all your questions. Once you have them on board they can even guide you through setting up the Utilities, the Spanish Tax process which includes Suma (Council Tax), Spanish Wills, NIE's and more.
I remember asking our Solicitor (Abagado) to let us know everything we needed set up and then towards the end of the buying process we asked if there was anything we had missed, even if it wasn't up to them to do it for us and the lady assigned to us from the company who was English (obviously she spoke Spanish too) made sure that we had not missed anything out of our list of things to do.
Personally I think the problem can be when foreigners don't check with their solicitor that everything is set up properly and then go back to their home country thinking all is well and then utility bills may not be being paid and taxes are not being paid. This can then escalate to Utilities being cut off and fines for tax avoidance before you even know these things are not set up.

As for the joint buying and fees, advice above is good, but personally if at all possible I would not buy jointly as you never know what the future will bring, no matter how things are now.

Good luck with your property search.

Jan

PS Note to the members - Please don't make this turn into a recommended Solicitor topic (as most topics like this seem to do), we have quite a few of those already! Thanks.

When I was considering buying I thought about the build quality in Spain. Houses in UK are built to last but I am not sure in Spain. How will they look in 50 years time? Will the neighborhood still be the same.

It doesn't need to be a solicitor reccomendation topic I agree but have noticed that your chosen solicitor gets a fair few mentions! The pro's are the sun and the con's sunburn! Spain has some of the oldest cities in Europe so I'm sure the properties are built to last, give me bricks and concrete over cheap pine and plasterboard any day. Come to Spain it really is a wonderful place to live.