buying an apartment in spain
Discussion
swanseaboydan said:
I suppose if the house isn’t racking up costs then it can just be left . .
Depends… gardens and pools deteriorate rapidly if not maintained… so you’ll need a gardener and a pool boy once a week. Apartments can be locked up and left… just the standing charge to pay for electricity and water.
Chris Stott said:
swanseaboydan said:
I suppose if the house isn’t racking up costs then it can just be left . .
Depends… gardens and pools deteriorate rapidly if not maintained… so you’ll need a gardener and a pool boy once a week. Apartments can be locked up and left… just the standing charge to pay for electricity and water.
An apartment of course reduces those risks by some margin but then you are effectively paying an annual maintenance cost in the service charge.
What is sad to see are the many previously nice properties that have been left to fall into ruin. Usually with some tragic catalyst or, in the case of Spanish owned, a death meaning a will dispute and with the pace of the Spanish legal system the property is then worthless by the time anything might be resolved. And then of course those properties built without the proper licences (or a corrupt mayor granting a licence). .
RC1807 said:
CharlesdeGaulle said:
I spend waaaaay too much time looking on there. Heading back to Estoi in about 8 weeks. Hunting in/around Tavira.I've got 3 weeks mooching all over to try and pin down the region and town where I want to buy.
This site is worth a look too.
https://www.remax.pt/en/
swanseaboydan said:
Are squatters a big problem there at the moment ?
It always has been from what I gather. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a big problem, but something to be alive to. The issue is they have crazy amounts of rights in Spain and if you don’t get them out in 48 hours of arrival then you could have a lengthy problem. Police will help in that 48 hour window or else it kicks over to be a civil matter, and the Spanish legal system is glacial. Oh, and you’re obliged to maintain your electric and water supply throughout their occupancy, as well as cover the bills. Properties that stand empty a long period are the ones at risk really, and as I said, falling into disrepair is an obvious sign of that. We have one that’s currently inhabited by squatters on our community of 16 houses. It was a repossession that’s been in the hands of the lending bank for quite a few years now. It’s interesting as the people that have moved in fitted cctv and all sorts! It’s so brazen they head down to use the community swimming pool in the middle of the development.
swanseaboydan said:
It seems to me that some people are happy to leave their property on the market for years without reducing it - even if it is vacant. In wales it would cost you double and soon triple council tax to leave a second home empty - is that not the case in Spain ?
I think that in the UK, we mentally absorb stamp duty and lawyer’s fees.In Spain they tend to think, I paid €200k for the property; 8% or 10% VAT ,plus lawyer’s fees of 1.5%, they just think they paid €223k and so it must now be worth at least €225k, if they put it on the market, soon after.
Sometimes that works, but in 2010 they would have been lucky to sell for €150k and so it just stuck, or they handed the keys to the mortgage company.
swanseaboydan said:
Are squatters a big problem there at the moment ?
Chatted to a heartbroken couple on the carpark bus at Heathrow. They'd just come back from their place in Spain . Found it had had squatters in who convinced the neighbours they were family friends. Trashed the house, burnt an lot of the furniture, wrecked the decor, filled the waterless toilets with .....They were in tears telling us :-(
Chris Stott said:
Apartments can be locked up and left… just the standing charge to pay for electricity and water.
Plus the gastos de comunidad, plus IBI, plus basuras, and then the infamous IRNR (non-resident Income Tax). I reckon our flat costs us about €6,000 a year to run. Our IBI (council tax) is about €1,500. That’s in Marbella. It’s rocketed up in the past three years or so.Just as an aside, I got served with the Spanish equivalent of a CCJ earlier this year for alleged non-payment of IRNR. I had paid it on time, but due to an administrative error on the part of the Agencia Tributaria it never got paired up with my tax declaration. That was a proper pain in the arse to sort out. It couldn’t be done in writing, or at the local AT office, it involved a trip by my missus to the regional head office in Malaga armed with a shed load of paperwork and a Power of Attorney. I couldn’t go because I was in the UK at the time.
Shnozz said:
Chris Stott said:
Yeah, there are a number of companies that will sort your squatter problem out for a (large) fee…. A few grand and gone within 48 hours.
Yep. €3.5k. But in the scheme of what it could ultimately cost you…I know you’re not allowed to disconnect your electricity, but I wonder if you’d get away with reducing your potencia to less than 1, so the power tripped if they put anything more than a light on.
I’ve not heard of any squatters on our entire development in my 8 years of ownership.
My development of more that 2,000 villa’s, apartments etc. has a full time security team operated by a professional security company. They have vehicles, dogs and cameras around the site, which includes 3 golf courses. They liaise closely with the police and occasionally apprehend bad people equipped for burglary entering the site, usually over the hills. They’re also useful if there any issues with holiday makers (renters). A quick phone call and they are in attendance in minutes. They report each year the number of issues, attempted burglaries etc. and the numbers are usually zero or single digit across the whole site. It’s one of the reasons we bought here.
swanseaboydan said:
Are the service charges very high then ?
It’s a very well kept place so charges are relatively high. They vary though dependent on the community you buy in and the size of your place. I don’t think the security cost is a large proportion of the overall fee which covers general maintenance, gardening, shared pools, waste disposal, water, building maintenance and insurance etc. Much of which you have to pay for anyway if you live off a development, but I expect would be less costly. swanseaboydan said:
Are the service charges very high then ?
It’ll depend on the building you’re in, and what sort of facilities it has. It also depends on the size of the place you have, because the normal way of calculating your share of the charge is to take a percentage of the number of square meters you occupy compared with the total for the building. We have a lot of square meters on the title deeds, but a lot of that is our share of the common parts such as hallways and stairwells.In our current place what we pay also depends on whether any major stuff needs to be carried out, like painting the outside of the building, which we do every five years or so. We also have 3 pools in the complex, plus 24/7/365 concierge/security, plus permanent gardener, maintenance men and cleaning staff.
In a good year that lot costs us about €3,000 . In a bad year anything up to €1,000 over that. We do have reserves built up, but the President of the community and the Administrator seem to be squirreling cash away for a rainy day.
In our last flat, which was in a building without a pool or concierge, we were paying a couple of thousand euros a year. It always struck me as a bit of a rip off. Our current flat less so, because there’s quite a lot going on behind the scenes that needs paid for.
swanseaboydan said:
Are the service charges very high then ?
Community fees are our biggest expense.We have 150 apartments on our urbanisation, with an annual income of just under €500k.
We have 24/7 security (as part of the main development), 3 full time gardeners, full time maintenance guy (who also looks after the pools), a part time administrator (5hrs/day), and a full time cleaner. We have 3 pools, one of which is 25m x 10m, and has a life guard for main holiday periods.
We’re currently running a c.€70k/yr surplus, which amortises for the 5yr repaint of the urbanisation and other proposed projects such as installing heating on our main pool.
For anyone looking to buy in Spain I’d advise you take some time to ask about how the urbanisation you’re buying in to is run…
Our entire management team were replaced at an AGM 5 or 6 years ago… all sorts of funny s
t was going on with the previous president and his cronies, including taking backhanders for awarding contracts for the gardening and trying to replace our much loved administrator with one of his family members. They had mismanaged a project with the water supply company, which had resulted in us spending a load of money and then getting a fine from the water company because what had been done wasn’t right… for which we had to take out a loan to pay. The urbanisation hadn’t been painted for 10 years (though it still looked ok from a distance). The new president, vice, treasurer and management company have transformed the way out urbanisation is run.
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