The Agent Can Be A Friend

By virtue of their daily contacts, estate agents know who are buying and selling. The top agents keep files of buyers, sellers and specialised properties. It is not unusual for a good agent, when he learns of a new listing, to sell it within 24 hours to a buyer he knows will buy that type of property. An agent, given time and a detailed specification, will always find a property for a determined buyer. He may have to be chased occasionally but that is part of the process of being determined.

Spanish estate agents have a curious name – inmobiliaria, a word almost suggesting that ‘a person does not move’. Yet in Spain these people are very common – small local estate agents who know their patch well, concentrating mainly on resale properties. They need not be Spanish and indeed many are German, Scandinavian or British.

It is a good idea to deal with a registered estate agent. In Spain they belong to the Agente de Propiedad Inmobiliaria, have a certificate of registration and an identification number. They can be sued if anything goes wrong. Dealing with such a registered business gives the purchaser more security and confidence.

There are always stories in Spain of people losing their life savings because they have dealt with an unscrupulous estate agent. They may have bought a house only to discover the person selling it did not own it in the first place. The only real way to avoid this is to deal with a registered agent whose number should be on a sign outside the office, on a window display or on the exterior of the building.

The quality of estate agents has vastly improved in the last few years. Selling houses attracts some of the finest people. But it also attracts some of the more unscrupulous characters too, probably because it is possible to earn a handsome income without working too hard. Due to its financial structure the estate agency business opens doors to all types of people some of which are not completely honest. If horror stories are heard about buying Spanish properties they usually start here with the agent.

But if you get suspicious and nervous when dealing with an agent you should relax. First of all, most agents aren’t thieves and swindlers. If anything, they’re more honest than the average person because they have their licences and their business reputations to protect.

Agents dealing in Spanish property do take a high commission. The lowest start at around 3% but the average is 10%. When selling a country house (fined) it can be 25%. How do they justify such exhorbitant charges? Their answer is ambiguous, making reference to high advertising costs, commissions due in two countries and complex transactions involving different nationalities. In truth it is simply a seller’s market with demand outstripping supply, causing many people to enter the lucrative business of house selling.

The commission rate for selling a new house on behalf of a builder is usually fixed at around 10%. If a number of agents are selling the same property they may compete with each other, discounting their commission.

A different commission structure operates for the sale of a second-hand property, commonly termed a resale property. In some cases the agent operates on a fixed commission, but the following arrangement is more customary:

• The agent asks the seller the price he wishes for the property.
• He advertises and negotiates the sale of the property at another, higher price.
• The difference between the two prices is the agent’s commission.

Property buyers in many European countries are carefully protected during a major financial transaction. They are even protected from their own mistakes by the right to withdraw from an agreement for up to several weeks after signing the appropriate contract. They should be a little bit more wary in Spain where the Notario, a representative of the Spanish government, only carries out the regulation of conveyancing at the final stage.