People arrive on the Costa del Sol with very different expectations of what buying a property in Spain is going to be like.
After working in real estate here for many years, I have also noticed that buyers have changed. People generally do much more research before they arrive than they used to. They have been following properties online, reading about the buying process and, increasingly, getting information through social media and Facebook groups.
And that last part is interesting.
Facebook groups can be incredibly useful. You can ask a question and hear directly from people who have already bought, sold or lived in Spain.
But you will also get 40 different answers.
Someone had a fantastic experience with an agent. Someone else tells you never to trust an estate agent in Spain. Someone insists you do not need a lawyer. Someone had a problem with a property ten years ago and presents that experience as though it applies to every transaction today.
Very quickly, personal experiences and opinions start being repeated as facts.
I think this has made buyers more cautious, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I would much rather work with someone who asks questions and wants to understand what they are doing than someone who blindly trusts everything they are told.
But having access to more information does not always make the process clearer. Sometimes it does the opposite.
By the time buyers contact us, many have already done quite a lot of homework. Interestingly, they do not always tell us how much they know. I sometimes get the impression that they want to listen first, compare what we tell them with what they have already read, and decide whether they trust us.
Fair enough.
The problem is not that buyers have not researched enough. It is that researching the Costa del Sol property market from Northern Europe and actually buying a property here are two very different things.
You can spend six months on Idealista. You can know the asking prices, read about purchase costs, compare developments and follow every property group on Facebook.
What is much harder to understand from home is how the market actually works once you enter it: how agencies collaborate, why the same property appears with five different agents, why you are not always given an exact address, whether approaching a seller directly actually saves you money, and why something that looks perfect online can make absolutely no sense for the life you actually want to have here.
Even within Scandinavia, I see very different approaches. Norwegian and Swedish buyers, for example, can have quite different expectations of how a property transaction should work.
There is nothing wrong with bringing those expectations with you. But Spain is different.
And after years of doing this, there are a few things I wish more buyers understood before they started looking.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions I see, particularly among Northern European buyers.
There can be an assumption that if you find the owner directly, contact the developer yourself or somehow manage to cut the agent out of the transaction, you will get a better price.
In reality, that is extremely rare.
The seller has a price they want to achieve. Developers have their price lists and sales structures. On resale properties, there may be room for negotiation, but that negotiation is about the property, the seller’s situation and the strength of your offer. It is not usually about whether you managed to avoid having someone represent you.
So before deciding to do everything yourself to potentially save money, I would ask a different question:
What is your time worth?
Buying a property in another country involves a surprising amount of coordination. Finding properties is only a small part of it. There are viewings, negotiations, lawyers, documentation, contracts, banks, NIE numbers, valuations, notaries, utilities, keys and a long list of small things that need to happen between “we love this one” and actually owning it.
For most of our clients, buying on the Costa del Sol is not a necessity. They are not desperately looking for somewhere to live next month. It is something they have dreamed about for years.
They have worked, saved and imagined having their own place in Spain. When you look at it that way, trying to save money by removing the people whose job it is to guide you through the transaction makes very little sense to me.
The same applies to lawyers.
Please use one.
If you are spending €500.000, €800.000 or €1.500.000 on a property in another country, this is not where I would try to save a few thousand euros. Use an independent Spanish property lawyer and let them check the legal and contractual details properly.
If you post in a Facebook group asking for an estate agent on the Costa del Sol, you may receive 70 replies.
Someone recommends one agent. Someone else had a terrible experience with them. Three agents appear in your inbox. Someone’s cousin sells property in Marbella. Another person bought an apartment eight years ago and therefore apparently has very strong opinions about the entire Spanish property industry.
It becomes noise very quickly.
I would start with your own network instead. Ask people you actually know who have bought property here. Speak to a few agents if you want to, and then choose someone you trust.
Go on a few viewings with them. See whether they listen. See whether they understand what you are looking for. And perhaps most importantly, see whether they are willing to tell you when a property is wrong for you rather than simply trying to sell you something.
Then give them a chance to do their job.
You do not need seven agents simultaneously sending you properties.
If you realise you do not like working with the agent you chose, that is fine too. Tell them and find someone else. The point is not loyalty for the sake of it. The point is having a clean process with someone who understands your brief and is accountable to you.
This is probably the part of the Costa del Sol market that foreign buyers misunderstand most.
The market here is highly collaborative.
For resale properties, established agencies use shared professional systems, with Resales Online being the largest. This means we can access properties listed by many other agencies across the coast.
One agency may represent the seller, while another represents the buyer. That is completely normal.
It also means that if you give five agents the same brief, you will probably start receiving some of the same properties from all five.
You do not need to contact every agency individually when you find something interesting online either. Send it to the agent you are already working with. In many cases, they can locate the property, speak to the listing agent, get more information and arrange the viewing for you.
It makes the entire process much cleaner.
In the traditional collaborative resale model, the seller normally pays the agency commission, which is then shared between the agencies involved. Exact arrangements can vary, so any buyer-side fee or mandate should always be made clear before you agree to work together.
In other words, you can usually choose the agent you actually want representing you.
Use that choice well.
This frustrates buyers, and I understand why.
You see a beautiful apartment online, but instead of an exact address you get “La Cala de Mijas” or “Elviria”. Why can they not just tell you where it is?
You will sometimes hear that this is done for security reasons. There can certainly be an element of that, particularly with certain properties.
But there is another, much more practical reason.
The Costa del Sol works on collaboration. If another agency has listed a property and I have the buyer, I contact that agency. They arrange access, provide the relevant information and represent their seller. I represent my buyer. Both agencies understand the structure and work together to complete the transaction.
Publishing the exact address of every property would make it much easier to bypass that structure. It can also expose the owner’s privacy and create uncontrolled approaches to the property.
A serious agent should still be able to tell you enough about the setting, orientation, access, surroundings and practical location to decide whether a viewing makes sense.
There is a difference between protecting a listing and being vague because nobody has done their homework.
This matters to me.
There are a lot of people selling the Costa del Sol from outside the Costa del Sol.
There are also people who buy a holiday apartment here, spend part of the year in Spain and decide they can start selling property because it looks like easy money.
I would choose someone established here.
Someone who lives here. Someone who understands the different areas beyond what can be read in a brochure. Someone who knows the other agencies, developers, lawyers and local professionals. Someone with a real business, a local presence and accountability after the keys have been handed over.
An office alone is not proof that an agent is good. But an established local presence, proper professional standards and a track record do matter.
Because buying the property is only one part of owning a home here.
Six months later, you may need a plumber, a recommendation for a gestor, someone to explain something from the community, help finding furniture or simply someone who knows who to call.
That local network matters.
This may be the part buyers only appreciate afterwards.
A good agent is not there to agree with everything you say.
Over the years, we see patterns.
A buyer tells us they absolutely do not need parking because they want to walk everywhere.
Six months after completion: “Do you know where we could buy a car?”
Someone falls in love with a penthouse with an enormous south-facing terrace and does not care that there is no shade.
Then August arrives and they realise they can barely use it during the day.
Someone insists they do not care about the uphill walk, the road noise, the lack of storage or the distance to the airport. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes the thing they dismissed during a one-hour viewing becomes the thing that annoys them every time they use the property.
Of course, the decision is always yours.
But when an experienced agent keeps bringing up the same concern, it is worth asking why.
We have watched people buy properties, live in them, sell them again and tell us what they would do differently next time. That experience is part of what you are getting when you work with us.
The property that looks best online is not always the property you will enjoy most.
Buyers can become very focused on specifications: the number of bedrooms, the size of the terrace, sea views, a new kitchen, a communal pool.
Those things matter, but they do not tell you how the property will work in practice.
Will you use it mainly for long weekends or stay for three months at a time? Do you want to walk to restaurants, or are you genuinely happy to drive? Will you work from the property? Do you need privacy from visiting family? Are you here in July and August, or mostly in spring and winter?
A beautiful villa with a garden may sound like the dream, but perhaps what you really need is a lock-up-and-leave apartment with security and no maintenance.
A penthouse may feel more special, but a covered terrace on a lower floor may be much more usable.
A quiet hillside development may offer better views and more space, but it will not give you the walkable lifestyle you said you wanted.
This is why I sometimes ask buyers questions that seem unrelated to property. I am not trying to make the brief more complicated. I am trying to understand the life the property needs to support.
Opening a door is easy.
Understanding why you want to buy, recognising which compromises you will regret, knowing which questions to ask the listing agent, understanding the area, negotiating properly and helping you get from the first viewing to the notary is the actual job.
So question what you read online. Question your agent too.
A good professional should be able to explain their reasoning and be clear about what your lawyer, bank or tax adviser must confirm.
Choose someone you trust. Let them understand what you are actually looking for. Listen when they challenge you.
And if you realise you do not trust them or do not like working with them, find someone else.
Buying a home on the Costa del Sol is a significant amount of money, usually attached to a dream that has been years in the making.
It should still be exciting.
You do not need to make it harder than it has to be.