Introduction

Foreigners purchasing a property in Spain predominantly buy a new home bought off plan, or a resale home. There are however three other combinations:

• picking a plot of land and model property design from an agent, developer or builder;
• renovating a ruin – the classic rural finca;
• going it alone, building it yourself, on rural land.

 

Building or redeveloping a home is not something to be taken on lightly. It is not a case of buying land, approving a design, appointing a builder, going away and maintaining telephone contact. You need to be personally involved or, failing that, to ensure the project is managed by a local architect or building engineer.

Before starting on a project of this scale appoint a good abogado, one who can recommend a builder and an architect and who can also assist with a building permit and planning application.

Plot Of Land With A Model Property

There is little difference between this approach and buying a standard property off plan. A plot of land will be a choice from a plan. The house type will be a choice of several options available from a builder – type A, or type B, etc. With some thought and attention to detail a dream house is possible but personal supervision of the building programme is absolutely necessary – location of the plot, position of the property on the plot and adherence to the building specification.

Renovated Or Restored Houses

Many people like the idea of returning a derelict ruin to its former glory. Restoration is less popular than building new, because it is usually more expensive and there are limited opportunities to acquire a cheap, suitable shell building. Do not purchase a picturesque tumbledown farmhouse only to discover that renovation is way beyond personal skills and means.

You could also get hopelessly bogged down in trying to get planning permission and satisfying all the requirements of building regulations. It is all too easy to become entangled in red tape if not conversant with Spanish laws, nor speaking the language fluently.

Whatever the disrepair of a building, the process starts with the purchase of a property. It may be run down. It may even be a ruin. It is probably in the country but can be a terraced house in a Spanish town. Either way, the starting point is the purchase of a resale property.

Carrying Out Checks

Since the external structure of the building will probably be altered a number of checks need to be carried out before purchasing. The most obvious is to check with the planning department at the town hall to find out exactly what can be done. Demolish, rebuild, extend upwards or outwards, or simply renovate, are the options. With a town house, renovation and an upward extension are probably the only possibilities.

In the country do not assume anything is possible. In fact the height, size and number of properties per 1,000 or 10,000 or 30,000 square metres is regulated by a town hall planning department and it may only be possible to extend the footprint of a property by a small amount. Ten thousand square metres of land is a normal requirement for rustico properties (country land with no building designation with a water supply) and 30,000 square metres for land without a water supply.

Check utility supplies. If none, how much will it cost to install them? Important questions need answering about supply of electricity and water, sewage disposal, TV reception, telephone and communication systems.

In the UK it is normal to have a building survey on a property prior to exchange of contracts. Some UK surveyors operate in Spain, providing a survey to cover all structural elements, such as the roof, walls, doors, windows, floors, outbuildings, garden walls and external and internal decorative state. Damp tests will be carried out by an electronic damp meter to each individual room in the house, and comments made on general services such as water, electricity, gas supply and drainage.

Not many people use a surveyor in Spain. They will probably be Spanish and a survey costs around 1,000€ plus additional translation costs. People embarking on a building project normally have enough confidence in their structural knowledge to trust their own judgment and those who don’t should not be embarking on such a large project in the first place.

Assuming all these checks are satisfactory it is now safe to purchase the property and proceed to the next step of obtaining a licencia de obra (building licence) from the local town hall.