You may have read lots of articles about the costs of purchase a house in Spain, tipycally 10% ITP or VAT, Notary fees, Register fees etc.
Obviusly, you must know all the total cost of your investment. But there is something at least same important than the costs of you house, and this thing is to be sure that your future house doesn´t have any problem. You have to be completly sure that you buy your house free of mortgages, embargos, community debts, urbanistics issues, etc.
And you have to know it before, even, to sign your purchase deposit (contrato de arras). What usually happens is that all the foreing buyers contact with a Realtor in Spain and the Realtor finds the perfect house and once the buyer agree to buy the house the Realtor push to the buyer to sign the deposit contract without check all the legal conditions of the house. And the buyer, infront of the possibility to loose the house of its dreams signs the purchase deposit without become checking them.
And this is not correct, because once you have sign the purchase deposit if there is some legal iussue with the house you have to start fighing to solve it and this is not pleasant for nobody.
And the Realtor is not guilty of this situation because the Realtor Job is to find the best house for you, its jobe is not to check that everything is ok in your house from the legal point of view. You are to one to have to be sure that everything is ok. So you need to hire some lawyer, advisor, who check everything before even you sign the purchase deposit. Usually 99% of the purchases finish ok, but if you want to avoid that you are inside of the other 1%, you must do it.
