Purchasing a Property - What are the Essentials & the Pitfalls !!

Thanks - thats fair enough !

Harry

 Hi comaskey

i wish you luck and i respect your decision.  everybody's situation is different and in most cases - the price of a house in the next 5, 10 or even 20 years is quite irrelevant.  a house is a liability and therefore the criteria one should be looking for is to get good value for money and that it meets your living needs.

i think the fact that you rented for 5 years before buying is a sensible move and as others have suggested, this should be the initial course of action to avoid many of the pitfalls that have been mentioned by previous posters.

 Hi Harry

Ask to see the escritura and get a copy of the nota simple from the townhall, and don't presume a abogado in Spain is the equal of a solicitor in the UK, Spanish people do not use a abogado when buying a property. It will make a big difference if you are buying in a ex pat area or a more Spanish area or should I say more establish area,  Never trust a Brit abroad :( also find independent people to translate for you rather than someone reccomended, thats if you need a translator, what area are you looking in, I am sure there will be lots of people on this forum with houses for sale for one reason or another, good luck !

I agree with Moncapitan and Tamara, despite that appearing to be contradictory.  Technically, I think a house that you live in can be seen as a liability in contrast to an asset, as you tend to spend money on it and, at the moment, the values aren't increasing.  But, you need somewhere to live, so it's an asset, too.  I think Tamara and I both agree on the question of whether to pussyfoot around and never make a decision.  Isn't it better to just get on with this one life that you have and accept that you won't always win all ways?   In this context, this means that you're unlikely to buy at exactly the right time, get exactly the right house you want, in exactly the right place and face no problems or complications.

All this focussing on avoiding pitfalls and trying to get the best possible rock-bottom price is, to me, a kind of reverse (or perverse) reflection of the pre-recession obsession with property prices, that was apparently the key subject at many a middle England dinner table (us Welsh don't do that sort of that thing), when people were continually boasting about their increasing property values.  Now, the obsession seems to be how to screw over unfortunate vendors to the maximum extent possible, and that's the ugly part of all of this. 

As I've said before, however, there are doers and talkers in this life.  The talkers are often also time wasters, who will probably never have the nerve to just get on with it and buy somewhere, but instead dream about it.  I suppose that's okay as long as it doesn't waste anyone else's time, which of course sometimes it does.  When we were selling our cortijo a few years ago, we would get people asking us a ton of questions requiring us to answer long emails and listen to their life stories on the 'phone, only for them to then make us a stupid offer, saying that they couldn't afford anything like what we were asking.  If they could be upfront and state the limit of their budget at the beginning, that would be helpful, because then we could immediately tell them to sling their hook. We didn't accept a stupid offer and many people also won't now.  So, for those who assume all vendors are desperate and will let you have their place for peanuts, don't be so sure.  You might be waiting a long time.