Sold the house in Andalucia. Here's how it went.

[Devils Advocate]

Thanks for the further comment guys, so interesting to hear of all your experiences too.

Katy, as usual you convey what you went through perfectly and I can relate to a lot of it.

Getting up to see the sun pop its head over the sierras was a thing we just needed to see after spending the last restless night there before completion.

It almost made you think "why am I selling" until reality and your sensible side kicked in.

I also totally went through the same feelings re. clearing the house. The few uninvited "viewers" who came to the house seeing what was up for grabs always seemed to go for the pile we were going to squash in to the car to take back to UK, some quality pans we never used there, a good spotter scope, about 400 quids worth of Snap-on tools I'd used to service our cars there got a cheeky bid of 5 oooooro's which was kindly rejected

Brown furniture is a nightmare to shift in any country, so we never even bothered with it..we just gave it away.

The smaller items of real value we didn't want or couldn't fit in the car went to the cats home......far better than accepting cheeky offers that would wind me up for years.

Yes we also called a second hand dealer to clear the lot, as soon as he said it had to be worth his while I told him to get lost too. He'd have probably bid 400e or less for the entire contents, again I'd rather give it way.

I agree too with your comments re. the bank, I am in hindsight now regretting not just emptying and closing the account. After all I really don't want any more to do with them and a clean break was maybe the route to take.

Just read your latter post and I have to say you had a great result with that painting.....excellent stuff.

Keep in touch and we'll speak soon.


Miro.

You did very well by the sounds of things when you both sold and then bought in the UK. It goes a long way to making things easier when your buyer or seller are good people. We did the Cava thing too when we left and the buyers gave us a nice present at the Notary. A far cry from when we moved in after a local Spanish family had built and owned it. We got a broken Coca Cola fridge, some fireworks in a wardrobe and found a pair of undercrackers stuffed in the hole where the extractor fan was to be fitted......I got the OH to fish them out


Wicksey,

Many thanks for your reply and for clearing that up, very much appreciated.

[Devils Advocate]

Great post DA, it made interesting reading. It was a pity we couldn't meet up last week while you were here. Murthy's law I was in the UK while you were here. I hope Bilbao came up to expectations. At least we were able to update each other via WhatsApp..

Yes Mark, it was just poor timing but I hope you had a superb time on your travels and a great journey home.......would love to catch up with you next time as we will for sure be back there.

Bilbao actually bettered our expectations, I was blown away by Plaza Nueva as you know.
The train from Muskiz was superb too and we managed 2 full days exploring Bilbao and it was a welcome ending to a "holiday" that had become a bit of a nightmare for both of us.

It was funny us whattsapping each other too...........you in UK sending me pictures of England and me in Bilbao sending you pictures of your home town

Here's to that pinxto and glass of wine Mark when we do finally meet up.

Many thanks.

[Devils Advocate]

Numpty question here guys.

It's been mentioned many times and again on this thread that the purchaser has 30 days to pay the 3% CGT retention so as we can get it back.

Is this actually the purchaser himself? Or is it their lawyer who keeps this money?

I am only asking because as we all know how some people act I'd bet there's many cases where the purchaser just won't pay it if it was left solely to them.

What happens then? That's why I thought it was their lawyer who held this for them and paid it before the deadline.

Many thanks.

[Beachcomber]

It is the purchaser OR his representative that retains the funds to pay the retention. It is written into the escritura so if you cannot get the necessary copy of the form 211 to enable you to reclaim the retention you have to go back to the notary to report the fact.

The receipt for payment of the retention must be produced to enable registration of the property.

[Devils Advocate]

That's great info. Beachy and many thanks. So even if it is the buyers themselves who hold the money at least it is in their interest to get it paid sharpish so as to get house registered.

As for us reclaiming, as I said earlier we've left that to the firm who did our conveyance for the sale. Aprox. 350e they reckon to do the paperwork for getting it back. I'm hoping that works out ok and that we're not having to fill in any forms or having to scratch around for info. on how to do it.

As an aside our new details for Unicaja now work for online banking.........only 10 years too late

[1bassleft]

Bet you said "I'm Travelling, Will Bury it deep in the skip"


Love it

I didn't, Trooperman, because I am nowhere near clever enough. I confess it took me two or three mins of wondering what songs you were on about, then what song might have such lyrics, and then a search engine: Tom Petty lyrics I'm Travelling will bury
before the penny (or rather Google's auto-complete for thickos) dropped. D'oh! Very good, much better than my effort.

On the "flog, carry, avoid (hassle)" front, we bought our UK house from very nice people but I checked that the cooker would stay and Mrs Seller went into full Apprentice mode. I paid £140 for the heap because I was stunned she cared, in the great scheme. She later 'phoned offering the satellite for £40. Not for an Amstrad, maybe if it's Pace or Cambridge and can tune into non-Astra freq's (analogue days). Erm, it used to be grey, but it's a bit rusty now, have a look when you're passing outside... I realized she meant the dish. No, take the rusty old bin lid for all I care. To my shock, the bloke must've got up a ladder and did exactly that.

[Beachcomber]

DA, the form for the reclaim of the retention is the same as the one for the non-resident income tax. It is fairly straightforward to work out the tax due unless there has been an escritura of new building since you originally bought when it becomes a little more complicated.

A married couple can submit a joint CGT declaration but in all other cases there must be a individual declarations.

I would suggest that you ask your lawyer to send to you a copy of the form 210 once it has been completed and presented. This must be done within three months of the payment of the retention to AEAT otherwise there will be a fine for late declaration even though you are claiming a refund.

[Devils Advocate]

Thanks Beachy, that's super advice. Thankfully the Escitura is exactly the same as when we purchased.

I will now most certainly ask for the copy of the form 210 from them when they have completed and presented it.

I would not have done that had you not mentioned it now so many thanks for the advice once more.

Really appreciated.

[Devils Advocate]

It was actually interesting last night to see our house had now vanished from the agents property list.

It had spent a couple of months with "reserved" written across it and then for a brief spell "sold".

What stuck out is a couple of the 8 other properties for sale within about a mile on their site had reduced their pricing to match what ours was.

One in particular we classed as our main rival about 1/2 a mile away. It probably to some looked more "posh" than ours as it has the circular turret room and arches abound whereas ours although the same age was built in the style of the traditional multi roofed finca/campo house.

It always ran 30k above ours and although I'd never been inside it viewers said ours was probably a better layout.......even so we thought the turreted house would win the race.

Anyway it is now pitched at the same as ours was so it's obvious that market forces have come in to play.

I will watch with interest now and believe it will sell before winter comes in.

We realised early on there is a ceiling that these houses sell for and I think you have to be realistic from the off.............although it still took us 2.5 years.

[Wicksey]

I agree DA that the pricing of a property is all important but it is difficult to value campo houses as they are all so different. Everybody has varying quality of access and views and are usually very individual design and finish, so it's very difficult to price it. You have to rely on the agent knowing a ball park figure that similar houses sell for, but so many seem to just ask what you want for it rather than placing a value on it.

[Free at Last]

I agree that owners need to be realistic about asking prices, but I also think that sometimes agents seem to prefer a fast sale albeit with less commission. When we sold in 2017 the agent advised an asking price 25% lower than what I thought it was worth, having kept a close eye on sales in the surrounding area for at least a year prior to selling. I said I wasn't going to put it on the market if that was all I would get, there would be no point as I wouldn't be able to afford the kind of property we wanted to move to. He agreed to list it at my asking price, and 3 months later we had a buyer, after accepting an offer 7.5% below asking. If I'd taken the agent's figure, I'd have been considerably out of pocket. I don't think it was a fluke, either, as two other houses in the same street have sold for higher sums than we got since then. One was sold two days after going on the market, and the other within a month.

[Devils Advocate]

Morning Wicksey, I agree with you entirely about no 2 campo houses being the same, spot on. Even visiting local houses near us owned by people we knew amazed us at the totally differing views, ease of access and indeed design of the house, they could have been 20 miles away the differences were so great.

The other interesting thing we picked up on via the agents and also by meeting viewers whilst we were over there was the differing ideas customers wanted from a campo home.

We had viewers say it was too close to the nearest house (nearest inhabited house being probably 1/4 mile away) and we had viewers saying totally the opposite in the fact it was too isolated!

We had people love the track and people who were just loathsome of it.


We also had some very strange people visit. Last year when we were there in September the estate agent rang and said she had a Brit couple who she felt would love and maybe buy our place, she was truly optimistic.
We were over the moon and prepared for the visit later on that day.

We were told this couples main buying request is that the house have a clear view of Maroma, ours had a full and substantial of view of it and the surrounding towns so we thought we were in business.

The couple arrived and we left them to it, we spoke to the agent and she informed us they'd seen more than 30 other dwellings to her knowledge.....always a bad sign we thought but at least Maroma was on full view here

Estate agent called back after they left and we were bewildered, she said the couple said "House is nice but the view of Maroma was from the wrong angle we wanted" I informed agent they should start looking at houses 30 miles North in the Granada region to get a different view of it..... as in our area that's the only side of it you'll see.

Apparently they are still doing the rounds and pestering the agents and owners to this day..........and still not found the view of Maroma they desire.

We also found the slow market hurt us doubly as a few people I know would have bought ours but for having to sell their own Spanish house, sometimes when we found which house they were selling and the asking price they were after we knew it'd never happen.

I do think the agents know the market well and understand the price needed to have a chance of selling but I also think their feelings are often overruled by the seller wanting it to go up for more.....we actually asked to have ours put on at a lower price than suggested by the agents. We'll never know now if that has cost us a few bob or whether it was a shrewd move.

All interesting to watch now we're not involved

[Devils Advocate]

FAL, I think you played it spot on and the result proves it, excellent that your feelings and hunches were correct.

In our case we felt the agents had wanted to put ours at the top of the price scale compared to similar houses so we asked to lower it.

There is a fine line between pricing yourself out of the market and also underselling which may make people ask "What's wrong with it"

[Wicksey]

DA loved your story of the 'Maroma view' house hunters. When we sold our first campo house here we had 40 viewings in the year it took to sell. Boy, did the agents drive us nuts bringing up people who were obvious time wasters. We had a very small 2 bedroom house so one couple had 5 children and were wondering where they'd all sleep, whilst the first couple to ever come said they'd been looking at houses for 8 years .... doh! Sometimes we'd see the agent's car start to come up the hill below us and then disappear and never to make it to the house. Then we'd ring him to find out that they hated the track and asked to go back .... without the agent informing us it had been cancelled.

We've sold many houses over the years in 3 different countries and have only really found one excellent and professional 'old school' estate agent, and that was in France. He would look at your house then tell you whether he wanted to take it on or not and he never had more than 50 properties on his books. When he agreed to take ours on we knew it would sell, and it did quite quickly.

[Devils Advocate]

Thanks Wicksey, I'm certain I could write a small book about the happenings and events over the last 3 years in Spain. I'm also certain you could write a thicker book with all your experiences of buying and selling abroad too.

I have to say the French agent you mention sounds the real deal.

One more little gem we thought was funny also happened last September, the agent did try her best to get viewings whilst we were there as all the trimmings were out then.

Lovely couple came up to see the place, a gorgeous September day with a cooling breeze, all went perfect and we all sat down for a Tinto Verano when the viewing was over.

The couple commented on just how peaceful it was on the terrace with just the noise of the breeze rustling the Palms and the occasional lizard popping its head out from the plants.

Shame we'd forgotten it was Thursday and a local Feria started the next day.

Some plonker decided as per the custom to let a few of his high explosive, weapons grade, deadly and atomic bomb sounding fireworks off....probably lit with a ciggy and not more than 400 metres away in his weekend finca!!!

BOOOOOOOOMMM.........well the poor woman almost died and chucked her Tinto Verano all over herself and her hubby with a smattering catching my Mrs too About 8 more explosions followed and I looked at the estate agent, estate agent looked at my Mrs and my Mrs glared at me as if it were my fault. Never saw the couple again

[Free at Last]

We were dreading having to cope with timewasters or obnoxious people when we decided to sell, but I think we were lucky because we only had 4 viewings in total and they were all nice, polite people.

We sold the house furnished (the agent came and took more photographs to tally with the inventory of what was being left) and also left some extra things like bedlinen (decent quality, freshly washed and ironed), crockery, pans, etc. and stuff like paint and woodstain which we thought might be useful to the buyers for touch-ups. A far cry from when we bought the place from an old Spanish couple and it took us 3 days just to clear one one of the storerooms of all the accumulated junk. I didn't finish cleaning the place, scrubbing out every kitchen cupboard, etc. until 10pm the night before completion.

The apartment we bought came fully furnished (and was left nice and clean by the Spanish vendor) but we didn't actually want the furniture (good quality but not our taste). We didn't want to hang about trying to sell stuff as we wanted to crack on with the renovations we wanted done (or deal with cheeky hagglers) so we gave all the bric a brac and kitchenware to a friend who was having some financial troubles and wanted to do a car boot sale to raise cash, the old kitchen units went to a neighbour near our old house who came and removed them, and the furniture we donated to Cudeca in Torrre del Mar who sent two very nice gentlemen with a large van to collect everything (and some things had to be taken apart to move them). After their first vanload they told us the sideboard alone had been sold as soon as it arrived it their shop for €700, so hopefully they made a decent amount for a good cause.

[Miro]

We also had some very strange people visit.

I could probably write a small book as well! One that springs to mind was the viewer who not only opened our bedroom wardrobes (to look at our clothes?) but also looked inside the fridge Needless to say we never heard from them again; presumably they were more interested in our dietary habits than our living accomodation. Having found local agents to be all but useless, we ended up putting a sign in our window, which did inevitably lead to all sorts of dreamers, nutters & nosey neighbours wanting to view the place. But tbh, some of the agents clearly had no nut-job filter when it came to their "clients" anyway, and we did finally sell privately to someone who simply saw our sign.
We've also been on the other side of the situation. I remember viewing a studio apartment (with a view to renting it out) and being shocked to find about a dozen look-see men strewn around the place fast asleep. Presumably the vendor didn't think this might be a hindrance to the sale

[Devils Advocate]

Hi FAL, sounds like yours was indeed a perfect sale with no troubles to speak of.......perfect.

As you also say it felt right for us too giving a lot of our belongings to charity rather than unwanted haggling and bartering.

As you may know my OH is lawyer here in the UK and although she is often critical of some Spanish laws and how the legal bods sometimes conduct business over there she commented how the 10% deposit up front and a set in stone completion date was a far better system than we have in the UK.

It was our/my biggest worry emptying the house and giving car away then finding buyers had backed out.........as they can do here at the drop of a hat. The 10% deposit and for that matter the reservation fee do make that possibility smaller.

Only last year the house next to us sold (UK) and they emptied it........new buyers backed out at 2pm on the Friday the completion was then set for. They only lost a survey fee so no issues for them in the scale of things. It left the sellers devastated.

[Devils Advocate]

Miro, A couple of funny stories there....the second one made me smile

I remember you saying you never used an agent to sell, what a result that was and the saving of probably 10k, I guess that's a good bonus of living in the town where footfall past your door is assured.

It's always hard to figure who's serious and who's not when viewers turn up but by the end of the viewing you are usually left with a strong hunch of how it will pan out.

I'm also surprised in Spain, especially as they like to add a few extras on to the price of a house sale as to why surveys are not the norm and expected as they are here. I feel they are missing a money spinning trick and can't work out why they don't do it. After all they do Energy Certificates for Fincas which baffles me too!

[Miro]

Having bought and sold far more in Spain than the UK, we felt a bit baffled by this difference too (the deposit system) and I must admit that was one of our biggest concerns with our purchase in England: having sold up, disposed of a lot of possessions, and traveled nearly two thousand miles with a very disgruntled cat in the car, it would have been devastating for us if our sellers had pulled out at the last minute - although there was nothing really stopping them if they chose to. We had no such worry about our buyer in Spain backing out, since we had more than enough by way of a non-refundable deposit to compensate for such an unlikely scenario.
On the other hand, as you pointed out earlier, the system for transfering funds in the UK (via trusted professionals who deal with each other on behalf of buyers and sellers) is far more reassuring than the system in Spain. To be fair, things are a little less fraught now than when large portions of the proceeds were (quite literally in many cases) passed under the table in the notary in cash. I remember counting out large wads of pesetas in the back of a 4x4 on the marina in Puerto Portals many years ago - it couldn't have looked more like a drug deal going down if we'd tried. And when we sold our hostel in Torremolinos, the buyer, a jewelery wholesaler from Málaga, brought us literally a plastic supermarket bag full of notes and coins every Friday evening on his way to soccer practice for several weeks leading up to the signing. He could never tell us how much was in the bag, and remarkably just trusted us to count it and give him a receipt. By the time we went to the notary, we only had the "white" balance outstanding to receive (and quite obviously, he wasn't going to back out then!) but it was a very nerve wracking deal.