2969 Costs of Buying

:o I am sure there must be a previous thread but I cannot locate it.

Does anyone have an approximate breakdown of how much you have to pay in buying a holiday home or details of the 'extras' that you have to pay for.

eg.
I have read that if the house is for a holiday home you pay 10% Stamp Duty,
I understand the you have to pay the Estate Agent around 3%.

What do other 'services' are there and what do people charge. eg. Lawyer, Notario, Geometra, do you pay a Land Registry fee, etc ?

Whilst lookig at properties in Spain, we were told to assume 10% -15% of the purchase price of the house to cover all the 'add on's

Can anyone help with a best guess percentage or actual costs ?

Thanks

Category
Property Sales/Rental Advice

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 03/16/2006 - 21:08

Wish I was fluent and could say how long is the piece of string in Italiano.

Search for notaio posts on fees they were accurate for Marche

3% Estate Agents seems normal both for vendor and purchaser

10% if not prima casa

geometra basic survey of structure E300

Dave

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 03/17/2006 - 02:21

I'm sure there are lots of people far better qualified to give you more accurate advice but, if it helps, I can tell you that I've just paid Euros 400 for a very thorough Geometra's report and will be expecting a bill of around Euros 5,000 from my nice lawyer. I'm sure you can find cheaper though as she's Florence based and is handling both sale of old house and purchase of new. I'm waiting to get the notarius estimate on Monday. A British estate agent friend warns clients to expect up to 20% if purchasing as non residents and using a London lawyer. I would have thought that's a bit on the high side, though happily stand corrected.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 03/17/2006 - 04:43

It also depends on what you are buying and what knowledge you have about property generally. If you're looking at an appartment in town, and its lived in and the lights and the heating are on when you visit (more than once I hope) then you're not going to need an extensive architectural/structural survey. A pile of rocks in the country is a totally different matter. Ditto if the property has one owner and the catastral registration is very straightforward, you might not need a lawyer and can rely on common sense and the notaio. Not so if there are 14 different owners in seven different titles (not uncommon) some of whom may be dead or bankrupt etc. The list goes on.

A property with lots of problems (structural, legal etc) will be cheaper in the price, but more expensive in terms of what you need to pay to be able to safely buy it in the first place, and certainly more than you can ever imagine to "do up".

A lot has been said about rip offs, scams etc., and certainly its possible to be unlucky, but like anything, if you don't put in, you don't get out. So do your research. And good luck.

On a lighter note however, the good new is that a ride in the spaceship is free !:) There is however, a neurosis test that has to be passed beforehand, I'm afraid ;)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 03/17/2006 - 04:46

The answer I'm afraid is every case is different although I think the 15-20% figures quoted are a bit excessive. This is because in most circumstances the taxes you pay are based not on the price of the house but on the cadastral value which is almost certainly much lower. What percentage these extras will add up to also depends on what price you are paying for the property as some of them are relatively fixed e.g. solicitors fees will normally be around 3,000 euro but clearly this is a much bigger percentage of a 50,000 euro house than a 250,000 euro house (but [B]please[/B] don't make the mistake of thinking you can save money by not using a good solicitor - see various threads about people regretting not using a solicitor). Having recently completed on a house I can tell you that the total additional costs (taxes, notary, solicitor) were 11,000 euro not including estate agents fees (as we bought privately).

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 03/17/2006 - 04:52

My recent purchase was 14% on a property under €100k. I also bought a very low value property where the cost was 25%. So a % is not probably that helpful, because there are so many variables, and some costs are fixed.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/19/2006 - 16:26

Thanks all for the input.

From what I had previously read, I had guessed in th region of upto 20%, and I do understand that a fixed fee of say 3000 euros is more of a percentage of a low cost house compared to a high cost house.

It was just in the UK we always seem to get 'extras' added on. Like Land Registry, Search fee's , etc, which may be extra and not part of the lawyers fee.
I wondered if there were many extra fees like this that need to be considered.