Buying Property in Spain: the 8 Pitfalls That Cost Foreign Buyers Most

These are not rare disasters. They are the routine failure points of a cross-border purchase, and we see the same eight over and over. Each is closed by a specific document, requested at a specific moment — which is the whole point of this guide.

You are buying in a country whose legal system you do not know, in a language you may not read, from people who all met each other before they met you. In that situation, the single most valuable thing you can own is a professional whose only client is you.

The convenient option is the lawyer the seller suggests, or the one the agency always uses. They are usually competent and often perfectly honest. They also have a relationship to protect that is older than the one they have with you, and their fee arrives whether or not the sale is a good idea for you.

• Instruct your own lawyer, chosen by you, before you sign anything — including the reservation.
• Ask directly who else in this transaction they act for, or have acted for. The answer should be nobody.
• Expect to pay around 1% of the purchase price (minimum roughly €1,500). It is the cheapest insurance in the whole file.
• Give a power of attorney only if you cannot attend, and only to your own lawyer, with the powers written narrowly.

In Spain, some debts attach to the property rather than to the person who ran them up. Buy the home and you buy the liability. This is the pitfall that turns a bargain into an expensive lesson, and it is entirely visible in advance.

1. 1

   Get a nota simple, and get a fresh one

   The Land Registry extract shows the registered owner, the exact description, and every charge on the property: mortgages, embargoes, easements, court annotations. Ask for one dated within days of signing, not the one from three months ago.

2. 2

   Demand the community debt certificate

   Under Article 9.1.e of the Horizontal Property Act, the buyer answers with the property itself for the previous owner’s unpaid community fees, up to the current year plus the three calendar years before it. The seller is legally obliged to produce a certificate of the debt at the deed.

3. 3

   Check the IBI receipts

   Ask for the last paid council tax receipt. Unpaid IBI can also be pursued against the property, and the receipt confirms the cadastral reference matches what you are buying.

4. 4

   Compare registry, cadastre and reality

   Registered surface, cadastral surface and the home you walked around should describe the same thing. An enclosed terrace or an extra room that appears in none of them is unlicensed work, and legalising it becomes your problem.

This one surprises even experienced buyers, because it feels wrong: taxes on the seller’s profit should be the seller’s problem. When the seller lives abroad, Spanish law disagrees — and it puts the bill on the buyer.

Verified in the consolidated texts: Article 106.2 of Royal Legislative Decree 2/2004 (wording in force since 17 October 2014) and the Spanish tax agency’s own guidance on the 3% retention, filed with Modelo 211.

Buying off-plan means handing over real money for something that does not exist yet. Spanish law knows this, and it built a specific protection around it. The pitfall is not the law being weak. It is nobody asking for the document the law requires.

• The developer must guarantee the return of every amount you pay in advance, plus statutory interest, from the moment the building licence is obtained — through a caución insurance policy or a bank guarantee.
• An individual policy has to be issued for each buyer, identifying your specific property. A general document covering "the development" is not the same thing.
• Your money must go into a special account, held separately from the developer’s other funds, and usable only for building the homes.
• The guarantee covers the amounts paid including applicable taxes, plus the legal rate of interest.

Verified: First Additional Provision of Ley 38/1999 on Building Standards, in the wording given by Ley 20/2015 and in force since 1 January 2016.

The listing price is the smallest number in the file. Buyers who plan around it discover the rest at the worst possible moment — after the deposit is committed and the mortgage is sized.

• In the Valencian Community the general ITP rate on resale is 9% since 1 June 2026 (Ley 5/2025), and 11% above €1,000,000.
• New build is never subject to ITP: it carries 10% VAT plus 1.4% stamp duty instead.
• Declaring a price below the tax office’s reference value does not reduce the tax and creates a legal problem instead.
• Then the annual costs begin: IBI, community fees, insurance, and non-resident income tax filed on Modelo 210 even in a year you never let the property.

The contrato de arras is the moment the purchase becomes real. It fixes the price, the deadline and the penalty for walking away — and it is signed, in Spanish, at the point when everybody is in a hurry and emotionally committed. That combination is exactly why it goes wrong.

Article 1454 of the Civil Code is one sentence long, and it is the sentence your deposit depends on: if arras have been agreed, the contract may be rescinded with the buyer losing them, or the seller returning them doubled.

• Not every deposit is that kind of deposit. The same word covers agreements where walking away triggers damages, or where neither side may walk away at all. What applies is what the contract says.
• The deadline to complete is a real deadline. If your mortgage is not approved by then, the default position is that you lose the deposit.
• Make completion conditional in writing on the things that can still fail: mortgage approval, a clean nota simple, the licence of first occupation, the community debt certificate.
• Never transfer a reservation or deposit to a private individual’s account, or to an agency account with no client-money protection, before your lawyer has read the contract.

These do not usually cost money. They cost weeks, at the point where weeks are the one thing you do not have, because the arras deadline is running.

1. 1

   NIE before you need it

   The foreigner identification number is required to buy, to pay the taxes and to register the property. Start it the moment you decide to buy, not when the notary asks for it.

2. 2

   A Spanish bank account

   You will need one for the completion payment, the utilities and the taxes. Opening one as a non-resident takes longer than most buyers expect.

3. 3

   Licence of first occupation

   On a new build, no licence means no legal connection of utilities. On a resale, its absence can reveal work that was never legalised. Ask for the document, not for reassurance.

4. 4

   Energy performance certificate

   The seller must provide it. Its absence is minor in itself and a useful signal about how the rest of the file has been kept.

5. 5

   Utility contracts and their arrears

   Check they exist, are in the seller’s name and are paid, and agree at the deed how they transfer.

The last pitfall arrives after completion, and it is the most expensive of all, because it is measured in your worldwide income rather than in fees.

Spend more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year and you are a Spanish tax resident for that whole year. Not a visa question, not a padrón question: a counting question. And a perfectly legal Schengen pattern of 90 days in, 90 days out can add up to more than 183 days between January and December.

None of this argues for buying somewhere else. It argues for buying with somebody whose job is to ask for these documents while there is still time to walk away — and to say so plainly when the answer is unsatisfactory.

We represent the buyer, not the seller and not the developer. We negotiate on your behalf: that means defending your position, your deadlines and your information, in your language, from here. It never means promising you a lower price, because on new build the developer sets the price and it only moves upwards.