If you are planning a move to Spain, ensure that you have all the necessary documents in writing, with specific dates, laws and rights in detail. Whilst many UK buyers successfully purchase a home in Spain every year, a lot experience problems. By ensuring that the whole process is legal, you can avoid the pitfalls that have become of so many.

Thousands of investors have found themselves out of pocket after trying to buy a holiday home in Spain. It comes after many lost huge deposits when the developers went bust, or the homes were deemed as ‘illegal builds’ after completion. Many have found themselves without rights to the property they thought they had purchased. Several building developments in Spain do not have the correct planning permission and have left foreign buyers with no money and no home to show for it.

Andalusia in southern Spain is one of the worst affected areas of the country, with an estimated 25,000 illegal builds identified already, there are thought to be thousands more still unidentified. Those who have lost the rights to their property cannot sell it, and their families cannot inherit it. Many have been given a time period of 10-30 years before they are ‘kicked out’.

However, many buyers have lived in their ‘illegal’ homes for several years before being alerted that it was not a legal build. They even had solicitors and notaries oversee the buying process and nothing was suspected. The best thing to do would to be to go to the council directly and to check that the area for the build has legal permission to be built on before you do anything that involves handing over money.

To understand the full step-by-step process to buying a property in Spain, collect The Overseas Guides Company’s ‘Spain Property Buying Guide’