Pricing an apartment in a foreign country can be a daunting experience. Very often, you only have your country of residence to compare and contrast to, and given the huge differences across Europe, it’s wise to get ahead of the game. In the UK and other strictly regulated EU countries, for example, an estate agent visits your property and “surveys†the property. Current market trends are taken into account, the area, school catchment areas, local transportation, many, many factors. The estate agent then comes back with an educated estimate about how much they think they can put the particular property on the market for. Often a seller will contact a few agencies in the area to view their property, and then choose the one who gives them the highest estimate – remembering of course that this is no guarantee of being able to achieve that selling price, with the agency commission and other taxes and charges involved.
In most of Spain, and definitely in Barcelona where I can speak from personal experience, it is the seller who puts the asking price, and those agencies need to add on top their agency fee, and then the buyer generally needs to add an extra 10 % of the final asking price to cover all the notary costs, taxes, costs of opening a mortgage etc. Continue reading ‘Pricing an Apartment in Spain’ »