Helpful Tips for Selling Your Spanish Property

For British, Irish and other foreign homeowners in Spain, there may come a time when you consider selling. The villa or apartment you have may simply be too large, too small, or you might just fancy a return to your homeland.

For those looking to sell their property, they may find it is a tougher process than it had been to buy it. There are a number of families and individuals looking to purchase property in Spain, so finding a buyer may not even be the hardest part of all. Advertising your home – if you choose to market it yourself, use images such as those from sites like sp.depositphotos.com, and deal with the legal requirements – may be the route you are taking to sell.

Even if you will likely leave most of the donkey work to the professionals, there are a number of ways you can speed up the process.

Be realistic about the price & completion time – Unfortunately, selling a home in Spain is not as easy as putting a used laptop on eBay. Completion time can take up to two months, on average, from when you accept an offer. That is unless the buyer is willing to pay cash.

Knowing the right price is important, too. If you overestimate the value of your property, you may be waiting a long time to sell that home. You can search for sales of comparable properties in the area in order to help you, or ask an agent to provide a valuation.

There will be fees and capital gains taxes – Capital gain tax may not be applicable, but non-resident vendors will likely be subjected to a notary of 3% withholding tax. This can often go unbeknown to the seller until the final process, which can cause anxiety among some.

The good news is that you can reclaim this figure by employing a Spanish tax representative.

Many buyers want furnishings as part of the deal – Many buyers want a property which includes many of the fixtures they see on the advert or when touring the property. Be expected to receive offers which are based on including your furniture, beds, and kitchen appliances as part of the deal.

Bank fees can be costly – When it comes to those moving from Spain back to Britain, Norway, or somewhere which does not use the Euro, then fees can be a kick in the teeth. If you need to have your Spanish bank pay a banker’s draft into your UK account, this warrants a fee of up to a few hundred Euro.

Then you will need the Spanish bank to exchange the Euros into Pounds, which will work out at around 1% of the total value. If the figure to be transferred is into the hundreds of thousands, this represents a sizeable amount of money.

Understand how estate agency fees work – Discuss how the estate agent will take their fees, and what they are, exactly. Will their fees be factored into the overall cost of the property, or will commission be paid at an agreeable amount post-sale?

Understanding estate agency fees and everything else you are liable to pay will help smoothen the sales process considerably.