Pre sales informations required

Dear owners,

I am Toumy, a french guy who is on the point to buy a flat on DV block 17.

if you could send me informations on what is the normal process to buy such an appartment?

The company Zapinvest ask me to send 6k€ to book the appartment. This should be sent on the lawyer account : Alcojor & Villar.

does somebody knows this company as well as this lawyer? Could I trust them?

it seems that I should send the money without any paper om them.

Perhaps this is normal but I would like to check with you before doing anything.

With a lot of thanks to everybody.

Kind regards

toumy

Hi Toumy,

I bought from a company called Prime Invest who were selling on behalf of the bank. They had the sales office on Duquesa Village, but this has all changed now.

However, I did pay a deposit but I did get paperwork, a preliminary contract, and a receipt.

I would give the deposit to your solicitor to send and ask them to check the credentials of Alcojar & Villar (& Zapinvest)before transferring any money.

I'm sure everything will be fine, but better safe than sorry.

Good luck,

Martin

Hi Martin,

I did already send the 6k€ to reserve the appartment to the lawyer Alcojor. They had sent me a mission contract where everything is writen (what they have to do and what I will pay).

I did this because my preliminary investigation on the net and through Duquesa village owners did'nt show any bad behavior of these two companies.

Alcojo is established still almost 10 years and zapinvest have office in belgium and in puerto Duquesa , so I suppose that the risk is reduced and that I can trust them (I have spoken to several persons at the cabinet )

They will open me an account at the bank, do the NIE, and we should finalize end of february with a visit at the notaire in spain.

My concern is how can I trust the document I will sign at the notaire if it is writen in spanish ? My lawyer can the french fluently but this mean that I have to trust him again. Do you know if there is anyway to get a draft before ?

When did you buy at Prime Invest ? Did you enter your flat already ? Are you happy with it ?

It is nice to share the experiences with other peoples.

Thanks again for your reply.

Toumy

Hi Toumy,

I'm glad everything seems fine with the selling agent and their lawyers.

We bought our apartment about three years ago.

It was a bank repossession so we had to buy it 'as seen', however happy to tell you we had no major problems - everything worked fine.

We used a Spanish lawyer - he verbally translated the contract for us into English, but basically we just trusted him to make sure everything was ok. As far as I know, everything is fine.

One thing you should maybe be aware of is the property taxes when you buy the apartment. The government will try to tax you at a mucher higher valuation than you are purchasing. You can fight this (we did and we won, but it cost us EU1500 in legal fees, but saved us EU2500 in taxes). There is a thread about this on this website, which you could take a look at.

All the best,

Martin

Hi Martin,

Thanks foy your explanation.

yes I dd see the topics regarding the complimentary taxes.

I will see with the lawyer once this will appear.

I am happy to have bought this flat. I really like it and for this price you only have a service room of 10 m2 in paris.

i wanted initially to be  more close to Estepona but prices are a bit higher ad finally, puerto de la duquesa seems to be a nice place.

Is'nt it too crowded in summer ( july and august)

Kind regards

toumy

Hi Toumy,

We're new owners as well (bought in october).

We also had to pay 6000€ to a lawyer we never met to get the apartment off the market.

We had some problems/issues buying our apartment, but all in all were happy and were going down there next friday for our first holiday. Short explanation off our problems - you can pm me if you want to know more..

we were surprised with all the extra costs that came up along the process (lawyer, tax, bank fees and so on), we ended up paying around 18% in addition to the original price. (Collimentary taxes not included - fear for a letter waiting for us down there)

When we bought we were told by our broker that Prime Invest would fix any issues with the apartment that we would find within two weeks after completion - this was not the case, the broker lied to us! Until now there were som minor issues that we will try to fix next week.

The squaremeters on the blueprint that we were given from Prime Invest were far from correct, (the blueprint states that apto = 102 and terazas = 22,92 sqm - the real measurement showed 84 sqm and 14 sqm! We tried to get an explanation from Prime Invest, but they told us that it was the walls in the apartment which is all wrong!

If you are not in Spain signing the "power of attorney" in a legal office, the spanish law requires that you get it signed in a legal office in your home country and then go to the foreign department to get the "Apostile Haag" stamp. 

Our lawyer failed to contact the water and electricity company in time, so when we went there to furnish the apartment we had no water/electricity for the first 5 days - not until we went to the offices our selfes we got them to open it (very nice and helpfull people)

Welcome to contact me, and if you have any good ideas/information for us we would be gratefull as well.

Regards

Dan

Hi Dan,

Thanks a lot for all your explanation. Until now , everything seems to be fine with the lawyer which seems to be very professional. They are all fluent in french , so it is much easier for me. I have sent all the money on my bank account already and I am suppose to have the key on the 16th of Feb which is very fast. The lonely surprise is that there is 300€ which will be taken on my account from the syndic and it seems this has not to do with the communauty expenses (I have asked the lawyer to investigate what it is exactly).

How do you handle with the mail there ? How do you know that you have mail ?

I will try to measure the appartment and will let you know (the one I bought is supposed 99,69M2 & 27,25M2 terrasse.

I don't know how to send PM.

Thanks a lot anyway for your kind help.

Kind regards

Toumy

Bienvenue a Duquesa Village!

Vous serez surpris combien the francias il-y-a a DV pendant l'ete!!

A few advise:

1.Do not get surpised by taxes!! All taxes are based on the cadastral values of your property, rather than the contract price, to avoid tax-dodging. So you'd better know this value. You will have to pay two types of property taxes: IBI (to the local council of Manilva) the owner Jan 1st has to pay it for that given year. In Manilva it has just been reduced from 0.9% to 0.7% and it is due somewhere around June (+- 2 months). And an imputed property tax (to the Spanish tax office,  non-resident property owners have to pay it, those who do not rent out their property, also known as from-210 tax), which is 25% of the 2% value of your property. Many people dodge this tax, as it is hard to check it you have paid it or not, unless there is title change or similar.

2. Get a key-holding. This is important as they will check your property regularly while you are not there, and provide some useful advise about everyting, should you need it. They can also help with mail collection, which is left in the "entrance-office" at the barriers.

Have fun! Cheers