How reading the local newspaper can help you pay less for overseas property

The classified property pages are often the most accurate source of information about property prices overseas. My experience in Spain is that most websites advertising houses, villas and apartments for sale are not updated very often.

I don’t know how it works in other places, but here in Ibiza anybody can set themselves up as an estate agent and most of them seem to find the majority of the houses and apartments on their books from the newspapers. It’s a cutthroat business because there’s no limit to the number of estate agents that can represent the same property.

As a result, what tends to happen is people with property to sell will first advertise in the local newspaper in the hope of avoiding the standard 5% fee estate agents charge here. As soon as the ad appears in the paper, the seller will be inundated with calls from estate agents as well as, perhaps, the odd genuine buyer.

In fact, estate agents don’t always bother to speak to the person selling the property before putting the house or apartment on their books. The salesperson thinks the seller isn’t going to be too bothered who introduces a buyer to them as long as they get a reasonable price.

In theory the vendor will lose out if the sale comes through an estate agent. They actually pay the 5% commission on the selling price. In practice the agent will add at least 5% to the price that the seller had originally asked for in the newspaper ad. In other words, the aim is to make the purchaser pay the commission.

Incidentally, you’ll notice after you’ve been looking at property in Spain for just a short time that estate agents never tell you in detail where a villa or apartment is located. The ads and pictures in their windows only give a vague idea of the area. That’s to stop prospective buyers knocking on the doors of properties for sale and dodging the commission that way.

So why do so many foreign property purchasers use an estate agent? The answer tends to come down to language. Many people are effectively paying thousands of euros for an interpreter.

It is nerve-wracking to phone somebody out of the blue when you’re not sure if you’ll be able to understand what they’re saying. This is, of course, an added motivation to learn to speak the language of the country you’re emigrating to. But, realistically, you may find it easier if you’ve got a friend or can pay somebody to interpret for you. You can also ask them to help you read through the local newspaper’s property pages.

In an ideal world you’d find the overseas property you want to live in, sit down with the vendor and work out a price that was agreeable to all. Sadly the real world doesn’t often work like that. The process of buying and selling property is designed to make everybody dishonest. I’ll look at that and how an estate agent could help you pay less for a property in future articles. 

My experience is based entirely on buying property in Ibiza. I’ve no doubt the experience is very different elsewhere in Spain, let alone the rest of the world. I’d love to hear your experiences. Please add your comments below or in the discussion forums.