Hi all

I have a friend that is in the process of having a villa built in Spain and has been asked for lawyers fees of 9000 euros. This seems rather alot to me or is this an average charge?

Thanks in advance

Queenie

To me this seems very high.

Unless they are getting a 40 million euro villa built.

What services are they contracting the lawyer to do?

Normally it is 1% of the property price, so a 500.000 euros property would be 5000 euros, but normally for property conveyancing they would discount. I would personally pay around 1500 euros for property conveyancing, and never 9000. But it depends on the villa and the complexity of the deal. But to me is too high.

__________________

Hi thanks for that - I thought it was too much for a 3 bedroom villa. I will pass on your info to him.

If you are buying on a resort or urbanisation, try to find a lawyer that has represented other clients there before. It will save time and money as they won't have to go through all the paperwork for the first time. Regardless of the value of the property the conveyancing work involved is the same. You shouldn't really be paying more than 1000 Euros for a good local lawyer but a lot of them will try to charge more to foreigners.

Queenie,

I have just done a sequence of purchases on behalf of investors, at the same complex. We asked four conveyancers with a formal letter to quote for provision of services to act on our behalf in a sequence of not less than 20 properties and not more than 100. Here's the range of prices received:

€400 per apartment and €100 for processing NIE and POA
€650 per apartment "all in"
€1,250 per apartment and additional costs (estimated) of €300 for POA and NIE processing
€1,500 per apartment, and go somewhere else for NIE

So it pays to shop around. Local recommendations are likely to come with an attached "finder fee".

If you can tell me the general area, I may be able to recommend. I have four colleagues in property in Spain in different areas.