I had heard lots of horror stories about sales falling through at the last minute when we sold our house in the UK prior to moving here - so I refused to give in my notice at work until the sale had actually completed, took a week's leave to be in Spain when our stuff was delivered (we were moving to a holiday home we already owned) then went back to complete my month's notice. Likewise when we came to sell the Spanish house, I did not want to get into a chain situation where we were dependent on selling before being able to complete a purchase, so we waited until we had actually sold before we even started looking at new properties, so as not to waste anyone's time - and I thought it would be better to be a cash buyer. We moved into temporary accommodation in the meantime (a house kindly lent to us, rent free, by a friend). The purchase of our new property, once we had found it, went through problem free in exactly one week from first viewing it to completion.Devils Advocate wrote: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.
We did, however, have a previous attempt to purchase fall through. It was a private sale and all seemed to be going well until the day before I was due to sign the compraventa, when the vendor emailed my lawyer and said she was not going through with the sale and would have no further contact with either me or the lawyer - no reason given. My lawyer said she'd never experienced anything like it in over 20 years of practice. At least it was before the deposit was paid although I did have to pay the lawyer for the work she'd already done. It really put me off entering into any more private sales. I had agreed to pay the asking price, was a cash buyer and had promised her a quick completion, and the property had been on the market for over 2 years. To this day I have no idea why she did what she did.
By the way, you mentioned the lack of surveys in Spain. The buyers of our old house did have a survey done, as did the buyers of our friend's house (the one who has just waited so long to receive her CGT refund) - and neither of those were expensive properties.