Potential buyer for my house

[mikewill]

I have somebody that is interested in buying my house.. The estate agent who has my house for sale is trying to get him to put a deposit down ASAP.
I would imagine that my potential buyer will have a survey done on the house. As far as we know everything is ok with the house as it was newly built 18 years ago, My question is what if the surveyor finds something wrong after the deposit has been paid and the buyer no longer wants to continue with the sale ? is it just a case of simply giving the buyer getting his deposit back or is it more complicated? we don't know how this works and we certainly don't want to incur any charges.
Thanks in advance

[Wicksey]

I'm not sure that I've come across anyone having a survey done here. We've bought 3 properties and sold two and it hasn't occurred, same with friends that have bought and sold here.

[Enrique]

Hi mikewill,

"I would imagine that my potential buyer will have a survey done on the house"...........you can't be serious ! this is Spain..........

If they love the house.... then it's sold........

I'm with Wicksey on this one have'nt heard of any surveys being done on any properties we have got invoved with.

[Lavanda]

Agree with Wicksey and Enrique. I’ve bought one house in Andalucia and two houses and one finca in Extremadura over the last 25 years. I’ve sold one house - the one in Andalucia. Surveys have never been an issue either way.

[dxf]

Hola,

I was a true brit and paid for a survey on my house back in 2002; Had there been any problems, other than legality, then I could easily have walked away as the deposit was only 2,000€

Davexf

[Lavanda]

One deposit I paid was €600 which was a tiny amount but it put down my intention to buy and the seller was happy with that.

[Free at Last]

The people who bought my old house in 2017 had a survey done (by a British guy who lived somewhere in Granada province). He also did a survey on the house a friend of ours sold the following year. Both sets of buyers were British and the same estate agent handled the sales.

[elusive]

Once the full deposit 10%? Is put down,by law if the buyer pulls out they lose the deposit and if the seller pulls out they pay back the deposit and pay another 10%. Whether this happens in reality is another thing.

The agent is probably trying the buyer to put down a holding deposit. Around 5k. From what ive read its not a legal requirement but some agents like to do it because if the the buyer then walks away they snaffle the 5k or whatever the amount is. Then the buyer has 4 weeks to pay the 10%

Why wouldnt people have a survery and certainly check legalities especially on a campo place subsidence etc or even on any other house when you see the state of some of them when they are been built. Dont they say treat it as if you are buying a uk house. You wouldnt buy something in the uk without a survery so dont do it anywhere else?

[Wicksey]

We had all the legalities checked out here but have never had a structural survey in Spain, and in all the years we've been here nor have any of our friends when buying or selling.

We've bought a Victorian house without a survey in the UK as we were paying cash for it so didn't need the bank's so-called survey/valuation for a mortgage. We have never had a full structural survey in the the UK and we moved many times there.

The only place we had any sort of structural 'survey' was in France as the house was huge and 18th century and we asked a local builder who had a great deal of experience in renovating that type of property to give it a once-over. When we sold it the purchaser never had it surveyed though.

[Free at Last]

As best I remember, the survey on my old house was done before the buyer paid the 10% deposit (we didn't ask for any holding deposit, but I don't know if the estate agent did). It was all done very quickly, only 5 weeks between them making the initial offer and completion.

If the buyers want a survey and were to pay a deposit before the survey has been done, I imagine their lawyer would want a clause in the purchase contract to say that if any major defects were to be found the buyer has the right to withdraw from the purchase and have their deposit returned.

[elusive]

Agree any lawyer etc would be daft not to have a clause about being able to walk away if there was a problem with the survey etc

[chrissiehope]

One house we tried to buy turned out to be illegal. We'd paid the ubiquitous €3000, so demanded it back - the vendor denied that there was anything wrong with the paperwork & refused to give it back. A couple of years, and a different lawyer, some property owned by the vendor was discovered & an embargo was slapped on it. Even so, it was the day before the court case that she walked into the courts & plonked the money down, saying that was all we were getting. Our lawyer then applied for costs & the vendor had to pay us 2/3 of that too ! We later used the money as a fighting fund against our 'project manager', but that's another story...

[Lavanda]

That reminds me of when we put a deposit on a house which turned out to be illegal. We never got our €2000 back. The seller said he was prepared to sell. We said we were not prepared to buy because the house was illegal. He couldn't see what the problem was. He said we were the ones backing out from the deal and had to give up the money. We are older and wiser now.

[dxf]

Hola,

That's an interesting one in that if the house was at least 6 years old, then it won't be demolished unless there are outstanding actions against the house. Yes it is illegal and can possibly be "recognised" - I would love a lawyer's opinion on that one

Davexf

[Lavanda]

Agreed, Davexf. I just didn't want to go down the route of the purchase of an illegal house. My lawyer in Marbella just asked me, "Are you insane?" which concentrated my mind a lot. Maybe it would have been all right but I was timid. Also, the property was inside the boundary of the Natural Park of the Sierra de las Nieves near Yunquerra and I felt that was also a big potential problem.

[dxf]

Hola

If the property was inside a National Park or other protected or potentially protected land, I would hope I would have walked away. You could lose everything. Not wanting to buy an illegal house is quite sensible - it can cause a lot of hassle & grief and possibly a devastating amount of money if the powers that be decide to urbanise an area.

As an aside, some time in the future, I would hope that every house is connected to mains drainage and drinking water; the way the laws are stated, the cost must fall on those affected, and not on those (sensible) people who bought legal AND connected to all services properties.

Davexf

[Wicksey]

Mains drainage and drinking water in the campo .... blimey, you're having a larf aren't you? Our first house here didn't have any water supply at all and since then our homes have only had agricultural water. I don't know of anywhere around here that has drinking water.

As for mains drainage, our past 8 houses in Spain, France and the UK have all had septic tanks. There are plenty of places in the UK still without mains drainage, so it's not exactly unusual not to have it. I would not expect to have it in Spain unless I lived in an urban area. We don't even have proper roads here

[dxf]

Lo

Hola,

Unfortunately Where I live we have pozo negros or "a hole in the ground" - there was talk of a law to change every house to a proper septic tank system, but I don't think it ever materialised. The water table under Chiclana is so contaminated that they are having to put ever greater chemicals in the water to make it "potable" legally.

If something to clean the system up isn't started, then we will have a cholera, typhoid, or hepatitis outbreak.

Davexf

[Lavanda]

Gosh! that sounds frightful in the true sense of the word.

We have a combination of pozo negros and modern septic tanks in the campo around where I live but all new buildings have to have the septic tank and old pozos are being changed gradually. People have wells for garden use but the best quality drinking water comes from sonderos deep in the ground. Ours is 150m deep. So far, so good and after 12 years it is still excellent and tested every two years. The whole area is going organic agriculturally so hopefully contamination will never happen but I can see the risk in more densely occupied or farmed areas.

[Lyric]

I think a septic tank, a proper biological one not other things easily confused, is a requirement for sale so gradually Pozos and the like should reduce. They will never disappear with the Spanish families hanging on to inherited property.