What a Spanish Property Lawyer Does for You

A Spanish property lawyer's job is to check the thing you're buying and the deal you're signing, from your side, before either becomes irreversible. Most of that work is invisible: it happens in registries, town halls and community records while you're looking at photographs of the terrace. Which creates the problem this page exists to solve — buyers routinely can't tell whether the work is being done. So here is the role stage by stage, in the order your purchase will meet it, with what you should be seeing from your lawyer at each point.

The lawyer's job, stage by stage

Mapped to the buying process, so you can see where each piece of work falls — and what should be reaching you while it happens.

Table 1

The right-hand column is the useful one. Every item in it is something a buyer can check for, and its absence is the earliest signal that a purchase needs attention.

What the checks actually are

One consumer line each — what they are, not how they're done, which is the craft and belongs to the people who practise it.

Title and ownership. Confirming the seller is the owner and can sell what they're selling. Charges and debts. Whether anything attaches to the property that would come with it — including, under the horizontal-property rules, liability for qualifying unpaid community charges from the current year and the previous three calendar years. Licences and planning. Whether the building, and anything added to it, is legally what it appears to be. Description and reality. Whether the registered property matches the one you stood in — boundaries, size, the extension nobody mentioned. The community position. What the community of owners is, what it costs, and whether anything is pending. Contract terms. Which clauses are standard, which are not, and what each one does if things go wrong.

None of these is exotic and all of them are cheaper to find than to inherit. What happens when they aren't done is the other page's subject.

What it costs — structures, not quotes

Deliberately no numbers here: fee levels move, quotes are personal, and the costs page owns the buying-cost bands. What's worth understanding is the shape of the bill, because that's where the surprises live.

Spanish conveyancing is commonly charged either as a percentage of the purchase price or as a fixed fee — agree which, in writing, before instructing. Then establish the boundary that actually causes disputes: the fee is the lawyer's work; the disbursements are the third-party costs that pass through them — notary, registry, taxes and similar. Those are not the lawyer's charge and they are not optional, and confusing the two is the most common billing misunderstanding in a Spanish purchase.

Then ask what sits inside the fee. Powers of attorney, the post-completion tax filings, utility and community transfers, and the NIE application if you don't have one are all real pieces of work, and firms differ on which are included. The question isn't whether a quote is cheap. It's whether it's complete.

Eight questions to ask before you instruct

These are about scoping the engagement, not about choosing between firms — the three rules for choosing are on the decision page, and they come first.

1. What exactly is included in your fee, and what will be charged separately?
2. Are notary, registry and tax costs quoted separately as disbursements?
3. Who will actually handle my file day to day, and can I speak to them?
4. What will you send me before I sign anything binding, and when?
5. How often will I hear from you, and how — email, calls, a portal?
6. Will you act under power of attorney if I can't be in Spain, and what does that add?
7. Do you handle the post-completion work — registration, taxes, transfers — or does it stop at the deed?
8. Is there anything about this property or this seller you'd want to check before I make an offer?

Question 8 is the one that tells you most, because it's the only one that can't be answered from a price list.

Lawyer, *gestor* or notary — who does what

Three roles that foreign buyers routinely merge into one, and the distinctions matter because only one of them is working for you.

Your lawyer acts for you. They check the purchase from your side and advise you on it. The notary is a public official. The notary is not your lawyer. The notary performs an important public and legal-control role in the transaction, but does not act as your privately instructed representative. Your own lawyer checks and advises on the purchase from your side. A gestor (an administrative agent who handles Spanish paperwork and filings) can be genuinely useful for administrative work, and is not a substitute for legal advice on a purchase.

The practical version: if nobody in the transaction is instructed by you, nobody in the transaction is checking it for you. For many overseas buyers, independent legal advice is sensible risk control.

Frequently asked questions

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