Talk Quesada forum

Hi everyone,

Just ruminating over the possibility of selling our wee casa and just thought I'd ask if anyone could advise what the costs may be ? say as in percentage of the sale price ? (agent, solicitors etc) ?

( As it is only an idea currently I didn't want to ask an agent or a solicitor directly as they can potentially 'tie-you-in' there and then. )

Thank you for your time.

Tel

Would also be interested in any replies

Just to let you know if you are buying another property here after selling one, you have to pay 10% purchase tax on the new property!! We were caught like this as didn’t realise we had to pay purchase tax. Cost us another twenty thousand euros which we hadn’t budgeted for!!! Just saying! X

Costs for selling would be:
Plus Valia tax. The amount the catasral or rateable value has increased and how long you have owned the property. Depending on when you bought, this should not be much nowadays as the price of property decreased significantly

Agent's fees. This can be negotiated but some agents charge a flat fee of up to 5% (shocking) and some a fixed fee of around 5,000 euro (again, shocking). You should try and go for no more than 3% of the value which is still 3,000 euro on a 100,000 property.

Solicitor's fees. Not a complete necessity to use a solicitor as the notary will do a lot. Most people do use a solicitor to make sure everything is done correctly and should be about 1% of the selling price.

Capital Gains Tax. Based on the increase in the selling price from when you bought it and is 19% regardless of whether you are resident or not. Again, depending on when you bought it could be nothing.

Energy Certificate: between 100 and 300 euro so shop around.

Habitation Certificate: If the previous one is more than 5 years old and cost around 100 euro.

For non-residents, a 3% retention tax will be withheld to cover any outstanding CGT. You should get this back but many people have said they come up against a brick wall when applying for it.

Solicitors will also retain a months community fees, electricity and water rates fees. Again, you should get this back once the sale goes through if all bills are paid and up to date.

If on a community, you will need a letter from the adminstrators to show you are up to date with community and they normally charge about 20 euro for this.

Probably missed something off but they are the major costs but remember IVA at 21% will be charged on most of those costs.

We’re also thinking of selling, useful information thanks marcliff

Many thanks especially to 'Guru' Marcliff. Invaluable.

Thank you all and best regards
Tel

Marcliffe, saves me posting the same question!

Spittysmum wrote:Just to let you know if you are buying another property here after selling one, you have to pay 10% purchase tax on the new property!! We were caught like this as didn’t realise we had to pay purchase tax. Cost us another twenty thousand euros which we hadn’t budgeted for!!! Just saying! X

Marcliff has already answered the key questions on selling costs ( with a very useful guide!) but Spittysmum right to remind everyone that then buying again incurs high property transaction taxes. So if thinking of selling and buying, it is likely to be the buying again costs that are the highest...Yes the purchase tax is a pretty big tax 'wedge' skewing the property market.

It is almost certainly one of those counter-productive taxes that raise less money for government than if it was at a lower rate (Laffer Curve theory) - since a 10% whack on top of the purchase price will inevitably depress the resale market, leading to fewer house sales than might otherwise occur if it was, say, 5%, and hence it is very possible that the total tax take might be less at 10% than it would be at 5%. ( The UK government has discovered, to its cost, this is the result of its hikes in UK stamp duty, it is getting less stamp duty in than it did when the rates were lower...) But Heigh ho, you just need to be aware of it and plan for it if you want to move....

( I think I remember Marcliff saying at some point that post the 2008 crash they reduced the property purchase tax down to 4% for a time in an effort to kick start the property market again, wouldn't that be nice... )

Valencia region charged 10% (reduced rate IVA) on new property and 7% on resale property.
To boost sales, it reduced the IVA on new properties to a super reduced rate of 4% whilst maintaining the 7% on resales.
In 2013, it then reinstated the 10% reduced rate on new properties but also increased the transfer tax on resales to 10%.

A great way to get people to become mobile, get properties moving or stopping people from using black money and not declaring the full costs I don't think.
Bit like the empty shops and restaurants around. A restaurant just about keeping up so they increase the rentals and the restaurant or shop is forced to close. No keeping the rentals lower to attract business, oh no. No get some money in rather than leave the places empty, oh no. Makes you wonder sometimes.

Selling and buying is incredibly expensive in Spain. We were looking to move a couple of years ago. Taking a hit of 40,000 euro on the property we had and selling for 170,000 and buying a new one €225,000 would have attracted fees, taxes and so on of over €35,000 on top. That doesn't take into account moving costs or the hit we took.

That's €35,000 on top of the €55,000 difference purely for admin purposes, taxes, estate agent fees, solicitors fees, notary fees, utility fees. €35,000 you're never, ever going to get back.

Like many, we decided to stay put as we quite like it here. Just somewhere closer to the town centre as we are getting older would have been nice.

hi, we sold our property 2 years ago, 3850 euros was held back plusvalia, as we sold at a loss we are supposed to be getting it back, 2 years down the line still not got it !! bloody nightmare trying to deal with the spanish system, just be very aware if you do sell at a loss you may as well throw the money down the drain.