A close friend of ours is having to sell his house here due to illness and my OH is to have his Power of Attorney to deal with matters whilst the owner is back in England.

We have discovered that a bathroom extension added to the house 3 years ago does not have a building licence (our friend put in the application at the town hall, the British builder - a friend of his - told him that the licence had been received and went ahead and built it, but we have been unable to find the licence and when we enquired at the Urbanismo office to ask for a copy, we were informed that the licence had never been granted and that they had tried to deliver a recorded letter to our friend to arrange an appointment for someone to come and inspect the proposed works but had been unable to do so. He wouldn't have been able to collect it from the Post Office as he is not resident here.) I didn't tell the lady at the Urbanismo office that it had been built anyway!

How much of a problem is this going to be now that the house is to be sold? Having checked the escritura that our friend has, it doesn't seem very accurate anyway from when he bought it in 2004 as it doesn't mention the bathroom it already had at that time, so will this present huge difficulties for a prospective purchaser?

I personally wouldn't worry about it.

Applying for the licence retrospectively is probably more hastle than it's worth and you may not be granted it!

Let the new owner worry about it if and when you sell the house would be my advise.

Would anyone buy it if an extension was not in the escritura. I would say it is not worth the risk.

The decision will be down to the Buyer - some will accept the position some will not. I personally would want the title deed correct.

? From memory our escritura doesn't itemise specific rooms, merely built sq m. & terrace sq m. So it might possibly depend on whether the bathroom was 'filling in' an existing verandah, for example (I think they'd still have required some permission/s).... but the escritura wouldn't necessarily have had to alter. ???

This happens a lot in my experience of watching small builds 'grow' on top of terraces etc!

I wouldn't buy it, but then some gullible British punter might
If the price is cheap enough almost anything will sell.
It seems the seller's EA did not pick it up(?) and I would suggest there is a good chance the buyer's solicitor will not either.

Ahh proof indeed that dodgy dealings bite yer back at some stage !! And encourage the 'not my problem' mentality.

Laws and rules eh - there for other folk right??

I would say YES, they would. 'round here, loads of houses are sold to both the English and to the Spanish with 'problems'.

These problems are then sorted either shortly before or shortly after the sale is concluded.

I can literally name 5 houses sold in the last 12 months where this has been the case (1 Spanish, 2 English and 2 Dutch).

We bought our house from a Spanish owner over ten years ago. The house itself is over 30 years old. We employed a highly recommended Spanish solicitor and everything went through smoothly, with ‘black’ money and all the other nonsense as was usual in those days.

In the years long before we bought the house, at least five major, additional building works were completed, the original driveway now leads directly into the swimming pool, a two-bedroom extension was built etc etc.

Because we are now considering selling, we tentatively checked on the legality of all the alterations. I don’t suppose anyone will be surprised by what we found.

If we still decide to sell, we’ll go back to the original solicitor, still highly recommended as the best in town.