Join me as I share my home buyer's journey with lots of insights for future Spanish homeowners:
Introduction
Living in Spain wasn't a lifelong dream of mine. I'd finally left Asia after 15 years and my partner at the time had friends looking for cat sitters for 3 months, so we ended up living in their beautiful home in Ibiza Town in December 2018 as a stop-gap. Needless to say, I fell in love with the island and we ended up renting in Ibiza for 5 years. Managing to get my residency sorted before Brexit - I finally felt ready to settle down for the first time since leaving the UK in 2003. Already familiar with how challenging, seemingly straightforward tasks could be in Spain, I assumed I was now ready to face the daunting task of buying my first home. But nothing had prepared me for how long it would take to find the right location or the right home and how confusing and stressful the whole process would be!
Like most home buyer’s I started to search online to get the lay of the land. I was really hoping to find an overview of the end to end process, so that I could understand what happened, when, and who to engage at which point. Maybe it’s the project manager in me? But unfortunately I couldn’t find what I was looking for. What I was able to find was either confusing or only covered a part of the process. I knew that Real Estate agents were involved, of course, but I didn’t know if any other support was available. Being a Brit I hadn’t heard of Buyer’s Agents as they are an American/Australian thing, and I knew vaguely about House Hunters from programs like A Place in the Sun but I thought they were only for people with really big budgets or something invented to make fun TV programs.
Chapter 1 - Understanding My Requirements
Whilst the process of buying a home in Spain was definitely not clear to me, the one thing I was very clear about were my requirements. I’m sharing them with you here so that you can get an idea of what you might want to include in your own requirements. It’s essential to set your own set of unique parameters so you can keep yourself grounded and avoid making overly emotional decisions. It's very easy to get carried away at a property viewing or let a Real Estate Agent sell you a home that really isn't the right fit for you. Laying out your own personal set of requirements will really help you to evaluate properties when it comes time to create your shortlist for viewings.
Mandatory Requirements | Nice to have’s | Definite “no’s” |
3 bedrooms - one for me, one for guests, one for an office | Small manageable Garden | Red kitchens |
All on one level - life is too short for hoovering - I can't live without my robot hoover | Near to ALDI - I have a serious Mosser Roth Salted Dark chocolate addiction | Swimming pool |
Cat-proof terrace to enjoy the mild Spanish weather. | Access to Barcelona for art galleries, shopping, music events etc | Ruins |
Budget:
| Within 1 hour of an international airport for friends and visitors and my own travel | Crazy coloured walls and patterned floors throughout |
Access to a town that’s open all year round - I had had enough of extreme seasonality in Ibiza | No need for a car - walk to station, bars, restaurants, supermarket | 4 or more bedrooms - too much work to clean |
A thriving lively diverse expat community | Access to reformer Pilates classes | Enormous gardens - too much effort to maintain |
Separate sleeping area from living area - so my cat couldn't wake me up in the night | Multiple levels - too many robot hoovers and stairs are a ball ache to hoover | |
Close to the beach, coastal |
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Bath tub |
Not clear about your unique requirements for the home you want to buy in Spain? Keen to learn more about The Beach Towns South of Barcelona? Homesmith can help. Complete the Homesmith Buyer's Brief and set up a free 1:1 video consultation so we can talk through your unique requirements.
Chapter 2 - Searching for the Right Location
While I was super clear on my requirements and the amount of money I had to spend, I had absolutely no idea where I wanted to live in Spain. When I started looking for a home, I was working full time in a hybrid role from Ibiza to Barcelona. Therefore, it was logical to limit my search to places where I could commute for work on a weekly basis. I began researching online and joined lots of local english speaking Facebook groups to get a feel for a variety of different locations. I used property platforms like Idealista, to find properties within my price range, then checked out the area using Google Maps satellite view, searched to see how far away Aldi was and if there was a pilates studio nearby. If a location had all of this, I would then book off annual leave to visit and explore the area in person. I considered these six potential locations:
Location | Thoughts | Costs |
My home for my first 5 years in Spain, I'd built up a good network of friends but was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to afford much more than a studio apartment overlooking a car park in San Antonio - I was correct! Ibiza is one of the most expensive places to buy real estate in Spain. |
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I liked the city but didn’t want a city life any more so was more interested in the surrounding towns and villages. But they felt quite remote and spread out, with not much of an expat community or any nice beaches. The flight schedule between Barcelona and Valencia was also too limited. |
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c. Menorca | I was struggling to come to terms with leaving the beautiful Balearics so decided to give the cheapest of the three a look. But in the end realised that whilst the properties were more affordable compared to Ibiza and Mallorca, the island is actually bigger than Ibiza but has fewer year round inhabitants so it would be similar if not worse than Ibiza from a too quiet in winter perspective. |
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d. Barcelona | I didn't think I could afford anything decent in Barcelona and wasn't that keen on city life but a really nicely designed studio came up. I thought it could be an option worth exploring seeing as I was in the city for work once a week. |
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e. Sitges | Sitges reminded me a lot of Ibiza Town, where I’d been renting, with its charming old architecture, narrow streets, and international residents. I had been to Sitges with a friend for a holiday in the early 200s, so I had fond memories of it then. Similarly to Ibiza, beauty comes with a hefty price tag! |
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f. Calafell | Much better value for money than Sitges, lovely wide sandy beaches, year round growing community of expats with busy summer season limited to July/August. |
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€3,250 |
If you’re working full-time or have young children finding enough time to spend location scouting can be really difficult. Retired home buyers certainly have more time on their hands, but the process still requires a lot of effort and careful planning. If you're located outside mainland Spain, this dramatically increases the cost of travelling back and forth.
Still searching for the right location for your home? Homesmith can help.
Check out this Homesmith blog post: 7 Reasons why Costa Dorada is Spain's best kept secret for Home Buyers
Take a look at Homesmith's Location Discovery Service to get a guided tour of the the Catalonia Coast South of Barcelona and it's vibrant beach towns to see if it's going to be the right location for you
Chapter 3 - Searching for the Right Home
If you're looking in popular expat areas, it's often fairly easy to view homes as international real estate agencies such as Engel&Volkers or Lucas Fox are experienced in dealing with clients from different countries and have agents who are proficient in speaking various languages.
But if you're looking in up-and-coming locations, with smaller expat communities, that offer better value for money, that are more Spanish, you are going to have to communicate with local real estate agents in Spanish to arrange viewings.
When I found what appeared to be the right home in a good location I faced several issues:
Having to arrange viewings with multiple real estate agents - typically Real estate agents only have a limited selection of properties on their books. So I was having to communicate with multiple agents in each location to see each of the properties in my shortlist. So many messages all in Spanish - my Google Translate copy and paste skills definitely improved!
Real Estate agents were not great at responding to Idealista messages - even though eventually I realised that I had to write messages in Spanish AND use a Spanish mobile number, still some agents would not respond. Not wanting to miss out on a hidden gem, I would go into full on stalker mode to try and hunt them down. Finding their website to get their email addresses and sending an email instead. I wasn’t confident enough with my Spanish back then, to try and make a phone call.
Spending time arranging and viewing homes that are not meeting your requirements in real life - The photos of the homes were often terrible with bad lighting, or just not showing the property well. There’s hardly ever a floor plan available so it's really hard to understand the layout of the home and if it is going to work for you. Also the photos are only showing the good parts of the home not the bad. So from the listing it's not clear if it's going to be any good or not.
Real Estate Agents wasting time showing you things that do not meet your unique requirements - Real Estate agents get paid by the seller on a commission basis so they are incentivised to sell homes as quickly as possible at the highest price possible for their client - the seller. On more than one occasion whilst doing a viewing a Real Estate agent offered to take me to see other homes they were trying to sell. I fell for this only once before I realised that they had no clue what I was really looking for besides the price and the number of bedrooms.
Searching for a home really is a full time job - let someone with experience take care of this for you. Are you struggling to arrange viewings? Is it taking up too much of your time searching endlessly? Homesmith can help. Homesmith's Home Search Services can save you time and money. You can trust us to do the viewings with you in-person or remotely if you're based outside mainland Spain.
Chapter 4 - Buying my home
The first place I was ready to make an offer on, was a tiny studio apartment in Barcelona. Not even a location I was actually considering. I was in Barcelona for work and managed to squeeze in a viewing and ended up really liking the place! But the Barcelona flat fell through quite quickly - it turned out someone else had already made an offer and it had been accepted by the seller. In hindsight, The Universe was reminding me I didn’t want to live in another big city. I have already lived in London, Sydney, Singapore and Shanghai - it was time for a more relaxed, healthy beach lifestyle.
With no clue really about how the purchase process actually worked I didn’t want to risk “going it alone”. I’d spent enough money on all my recce trips and had never spent this amount of money on anything in my entire life so the thought of dropping a few grand on a Property Advisor seemed totally worth it. Whilst I couldn't find anyone actually based in Tarragona Province, I did manage to find Mark Carr at Spain Advisors in a Barcelona Expat Facebook Group.
The second attempt at buying was a 3 bedroom apartment in Vallpineda - one of the urbanisations out the back of Sitges. Mark Carr viewed it after I'd been, and picked up on an issue early on - there were renovation works required on the exterior and all the balconies were too low for code requirements. The construction work was estimated to take 1-2 years. The seller's agent was really pushing for me to make an offer and start the reserve contract but Mark advised me not to do it. The amount of money I was going to have to stump up for the renovations was unclear, and could be anything from €10,000 up to €15,000 so too much of a gamble. I just didn’t want to risk it as it could potentially leave very little money to renovate the inside of the apartment. So I had to say adios to that one.
I’d had a house in Calafell in my Idealista wishlist for a few months and had a failed attempt at arranging a viewing via message back in June 2022. I remember walking from Calafell to San Salvador in very high temperatures to visit their office, but when I arrived the office was closed. Probably siesta time!
Not one to give up easily, I decided to give it another go 6 months later and sent the agent another message to set up a viewing for a second trip I was doing after a visit to Barcelona for work.
This time success! The agent and I connected via WhatsApp and set up the viewing. It was love at first sight. Even though my agent didn’t speak any English I was able to see that this property was THE ONE!
It originally went onto Idealista for €280,000 and it hadn't sold for a year so they dropped the price to €250,000. Someone else had made an offer for €230,000 which they were sitting on. When I viewed it there was another interested party also viewing. So I went in with a strong verbal offer of €240,000. They counter offered with €245,000 so I countered their counter with €242,500 but they weren't budging so we went ahead with €245,000.
The agent prepared the reserve contract, and I paid the 1% deposit from my bank account. This ensured that no one else could put an offer in and the agent had to stop further viewings. Next up, the point of no return - the ARRAS and 10% payment. I'd already exchanged my deposit money from the different bank accounts I had dotted around the world and had it sitting ready and waiting. I also had pre-approval on a mortgage with my Spanish Bank in Ibiza so everything was set up on my end.
Due to Christmas being in the middle of it all, things were delayed a little further but I was able to get the appointment at the notary on March 31st to get the keys and arrange my move with the amazing Richard - Man with a van Tarragona for the 13th April. Finding reliable and great value movers actually in ibiza was proving impossible so I ended up finding someone located where I was moving to - Tarragona Province. Richard is a fellow Brit who moved to Spain with his family in 2019, he's bi-lingual and know's everything there is to know about moving. He figured out the cheapest and fastest route for me. He even offered to take my cat Lola but in the end I flew with her on Vueling and drove us in a rental car to the house. I'll never forget that first night in my new home. Sleeping in a strange bed in a borrowed sleeping bag on a musty old pillow.
Buying a home in Spain requires support. We partner with experts who can understand the Spanish legal documentation and make sure your home is safe to buy with no hidden issues. Homesmith can help.
Homesmith's Home Purchase Service
Conclusion
It took me three years to find and buy the right home in the right place for my unique requirements. Since moving to the Catalonia Coast, I have met lots of other English speakers from all over the world who have had very similar experiences, and I can see my journey is not unusual at all.
The Homesmith services have been designed to ease the pain points I personally experienced when buying my home in Spain.
We aim to help other home buyers:
Clarify the process for home buying in Spain
Get end-to-end support for their entire buyer's journey
Understand the pro's and con's of the Tarragona Province and the Coastal Catalonia towns
Save you money by negotiating the price
Save you time by using our local knowledge and expertise to streamline your search or even do viewings for you remotely
I hope you enjoyed hearing about my journey to Spanish home ownership? I'd love to know if you have any questions in the comments below. Please do follow us on Facebook to keep up to date with all our news and views!
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