A Brief Guide to Buying Property In Spain

Arranging your finances

If you are serious about buying a property in Spain, then you should start arranging your finances at the very start. Getting your financial arrangement in hand early on is particularly important if you plan to take out a mortgage. It costs nothing to start early, and the advantages of doing so are as follows:

• Forward planning helps you clarify the advantages and disadvantages of taking out a mortgage in Spain, and make the best decision as to how much, if at all, to borrow.
• Arranging a mortgage in good time allows you to find the mortgage in Spain that best suits your requirements, and avoid overpaying.
• By taking steps to arrange a mortgage at the start you will have a better idea of how much you can spend on your Spanish property, and can work out the likely future financial implications of your purchase.
• Having a mortgage pre-agreement in place reduces the risks of you losing a Spanish property that it has cost you so much to find, and means one less source of anxiety and pressure when you are trying to close on a Spanish property.

If you leave arranging a mortgage to the last minute, you are likely to end up with an expensive, and inflexible mortgage, which you are forced to accept under pressure.

Along with working out an accurate property budget, you also need to plan for the ongoing financial commitments that you take on when you buy a property in Spain. These may be in addition to your living costs in the UK, and therefore an extra cost, or instead of your living costs in the UK, if you are relocating to Spain. Whatever your situation, you don’t want these costs to take you by surprise.

And finally, unless your finances (savings and earnings) are in Euros, you will need to understand, and manage, your exchange rate exposure, both for the purchase and for ongoing commitments. For this you will need the services of a good currency broker.

© Mark Stucklin (Spanish Property Insight)

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