Seeking advice about selling

Hi all,

I am new to the forum and wanted some advice. I haved owned an apartment in Marina D'or in Oropesa Del Mark for 5 years and have decided to try and sell. I did some research and it seems there is interest from Russia, china and India for Bulgarian and spanish properties. I did further research and found an organisation called worldwidegroup.eu who seem to specialise in selling to these markets. I am naturally cautious person and want to make sure these people are reputable. From the looks of it they seem a professioanl organisation and I have a full break down of their fees. I have also only had to pay a relitively small amount for them to market the property as they make their money from the comission on the sale. I have also ensured that access to our apartment for inspection visits will only be through our existing key holders. Having said all that they have asked me for a copy of our deeds which they say is to pass on to the agents in the various countires they work with, to hold on file so any prospective buyers can see its a legally owned property and not some scam, which does seem reasonable. However as I mentioned I'm a cautious person and just wondered if there are any associated risks with doing this and also if anyone had any experinece or heard of this organisation?

Kind Regards,

Steve.

Hi Steve,

My advice is to never pay up front until the property is sold, why do they need a copy of your deeds before it has been sold.  I am selling my property, what I was asked for by my estate agents is, copies of recent utility bills and another cert can't remember the name but by no means were we asked to hand over copies of the deeds - perhaps I am wrong.

Angela59

Hi Angela,

I have sought legal advice and there is no risk, it does seem a formality in most countries to show proof of ownership. Maria the lawyer on this forum advised me to only send the 'Nota Simple' which can be obatined from the land registry, as that only holds the minimal information they need. She implied its normal and no risk for me, so I'm going with that. As to the fee its only £250 to advertise and market the property I'm not going to give any more than that. But thanks for your response and if I have any bad experience I will of course share that.

Kind Regards,

Steve.

Hi Steve,

Yes I think you are right about the nota simple, that is the cert I was asked for.  I just hope that £250 throws up something for you, there was something similar here in Ireland and again dealing with russian clients they would not budge on their up front fee so I got cold feet.  They seem to advertise alot in papers looking for people who want to sell their properties.  Best of luck.

Angela59

All Spanish estate agents are supposed to have an up to date nota simple for all the properties they list (they don't in practice) so I wouldn't worry about providing that. Anybody can obtain one anyway if they know the details of your property.

As for the website you mention, being a natural born cynic, I would have to say they probably make most of their money from charging £250 to list properties like yours. Hope I'm wrong and you get something from it, but I think you would do better listing it with an agent on the ground in Spain who won't charge a penny until it's sold. There seem to be an increasing number catering to the Russian market, too.

Thanks Roberto what you say does make sense and having bought 3 houses in the UK it does make sense that why pay upfront, although I hope these are expenses for marketing in those different countries. I'll have to see how things goes and will feedback any good or bad experiences. If you know of any such spanish estate agents that market to different markets I'd be interested to hear. To be honest its so frustrating you just don't know who to trust and who not to when doing it all remotely.

Thanks for your comments.

Kind Regards,

Steve.

I have no idea where Marina D'or in Oropesa Del Mark is in Spain so cannot even begin to help.

The upfront fees they charge probably go towards maintaining their various interlinked websites and promoting them to sellers like you - how effective the marketing of your property turns out to be, only time will tell.

I can't say it will be any more effective for you, but why not put your place on idealista.com, you can list it for free there. Other than that, your best bet really is a local agent

Hi Steve

I seem to have come across this website a few times over the past few weeks as I've had several people ask me about them.

Did you find them or did they find you?

If they are taking a commission on the sale then you should never pay a single cent upfront.  Agents make plenty of money when a property is sold.

I do know some very local agents on the coast here who do charge for increased marketing.  They will feature your property in their physical magazine, take professional photos, email it to the list of buyers, etc.  But that's acceptable and it's only an option.

In terms of Russian buyers, yes there are more of them but they tend to be very rich Russians looking for very expensive properties.  Unless you've got something really expensive I doubt whether the Russians are your target market.

I had a look at some traffic data for the worldwidegroup.eu website and it's very low.  So they certainly aren't getting many visitors to the site.

I hope I am wrong and that it works for you but I'd be very surprised.  You'd be much better off listing (for free) with local agents who will then get your property featured on the major portals which is where most of the leads are generated.

Best of luck with it and let us know how you get on.

Justin

Hi Justin,

I'm starting to feel depressed now. Basically I found them. What you say makes sense as to do what others have posted. I'm down £250 although thats not my main concearn, more that I just don't know who to trust and that 5 years on and I'm stuck paying for a mortgage. I do love our apartment but we have a young family and want to extend our UK house so the burden of paying a second mortgage in spain is impacting us.

I have even started to make enquiries about dacion en pago, but that may not be an option from what I have read. I just thank god I didn't go interest only. I'm in negative equity at the minute and just thinking about whether I can sustain staying in for 5 or even 10 years when things may or may not recover.

I'm going out in April and think I will go down the traditional route of finding a local estate agent in the resort. I haven't thus far as just thought there is no point, so when I saw WWG advertising to china, india and russia I thought maybe that where the market might be.

Thanks for the advice.

Steve.

Hi Steve,

Norwegians, Finnish and Swedish are not hit by the recession as most of Europe are and certainly are buying properties in Spain now as I know the Norwegian Kroner is stronger than the Euro and makes it worthwhile for Norwegians to buy at the moment.  My advice is to try and get someone who sells to these markets - I have mine apartment in spain with a Finnish estate agent - I'm costa blanca south, not sure where you are located. 

Angela59

Hi Angela,

Ours is Costa Blanca also I think as we are on the coast 1 hour north of Valencia near, Castellon. Do you have their details maybe its worth me having a chat with them?

Many Thanks,

 Sorry Steve, didn't mean to depress you.  I was perhaps a little harsh in my response but I've seen a few businesses pop up recently preying on desperate sellers so I'm always cautious with them.

It is just SOOOOOOOO tough to sell at the moment and you're right, it's going to take many years before we see even a hint of a recovery.  Although there are Russians and Scandinavians buying at the moment, it's not a huge market (not compared to the Brits and Irish a few years back) and they have their pick from a now much larger pool of cheaper properties.

Official figures don't show that these nationalities are making any real impact on property sales and remember, the biggest market for properties in Spain are the Spanish themselves.  Most of my estate agents friends are selling to the Spanish.  Even in the glory days, foreigners only made up to (I think) a maximum of 20% of the whole property market.  That figure will be considerably lower today, probably a tenth of that now.

So maybe think about concentrating your efforts too on the Spanish market (find a Spanish estate agent).  Check for listings in your area and commuity on the major Spanish portals such as idealista.com and fotocasa.es and see what prices properties are being offered up for.  But be warned, the Spanish will haggle very hard!

Justin

Don't apologies Justin. I have no one to blame but myself thinking I'd made a good investment. Still my situation isn't desperate yet, just frustrating. I try an focus on the positive and we do love the apartment and get some rent. I will take your advice and market with a spanish agent and see how we go.

There's a Marina D'or in/near Opesa that says it's Costa Del Azahar.  Is this where your place is Angela?

No Maddiemack, I'm Costa Blanca South - Orihuela Costa to be exact.

Angela59

** EDITED - Spam **

Hi Steve We were approached by email by this group as we are selling our property and after an exchange of emails getting to understand what exactly they did we decided to ask them som questions as follows.

Thank you for information which we are digesting and assessing. Some immediate questions spring to mind as follows:-

First do you have anyone who has used you to sell their property who would talk to us about their experience?

How busy is your site and do you monitor the traffic on to your site?

Are you a registered company?

Are you covered by any association or organisation that can qualify your offer and contents of your services.

How do you obtain information, photographs and video about our property?

Who visits our site to assess the value of our property?

How do you manage the transactions and legal arrangements for any deals that are made?

Can we manage the legal arrangements through our own solicitor.

How do you deal with the cash transactions?

Please let us know your procedures and management of any arrangement we might make with you.

We had no reply from them regarding these questions and no further contact??

Having received from them previously a long explaination of what they claim to do for the £250 fee and commission and the management of our sale looked to good to be true. You know what they say under these circumstances!

Dave and Mo

 May I contribute from the buyer's viewpoint - after all I'm exactly who you need, the agent is merely an expensive go-between. 

My wife and I are currently considering where we wsill live for the next decade or so. While Spain has disadvantages, not least the huge concentrations of expats, it is still a potential, compromise solution for us. We have the opposite problem. How do we identify the right property?

Our unstinct is to avoid agents like the plague. Foreign agents generally specialize in the buyers from their home country and hiaving now met a few British agents I now know what happened to those who couldn't hack commission only selling of time-share and that's the ones who actually know something about selling! Spanish agents peresent a language problem, even the ones who can speak English - until one hits a snag.

The alternative has to be finding the right website or using local knowledge - initially someone elses to identify properties. Not an easy route when the gap between the reality of the market and the price needed by a seller, perhaps for the excellent reason of negative equity means the buyer is almost always delivering bad news.

I have tried and probably will again, advertising my needs but that's a very slow method. It relies on sellers looking for buyers and how many do you know who check the boards and want ads regularly?

One alternative we are seriously considering is finding a seller who wants out and is willing to come to an arrangement where we take responsibility for all of the outgoings with an option to purchase at an agreed price in an agreed period of time. the alternative is continuing to take advantage of ever reducing rents - the market is currently at about €450 per month for a good quality three-bedroom house, with a pool in the hills, fully furnished with the owner responsible for all of the maintenance. The problem with that is lack of continuity and on our part lack of incentive to improive things, even little things like the garden which help sell a property.

I didn't say I was offering a solution here, just the buyer's perspective. If anyone sees a way in which my thinking meets their needs I'd love to explore it and hopefully I have at least given someone food for thought.

 Hi Delaluzian - I am in the same situation, and I have to say, I am finding it difficult to absorb all of the various sites and info surrounding the unbelievable amount of property currently for sale.   The site that Roberto suggested: idealista.com   is really good, and I have pulled quite a few villas off there that I want to go and see (you need some Spanish for some of the info though ), and I also use Kyero directly from this site.  The problem with Kyero is that when you send a query you do not get a reply from the relevant estate agent necessarily.  So you get passed around a bit.  

You don't say where you are - but I would just go over and rent for a while and have a really good look around.  Most of the bank repo sites are only giving a guide price, and many say they would welcome offers.  BUT some of the many sites springing up claiming to sell fantastically reduced property seem a bit expensive to me!!!

Good luck