big wheels

Sorry to hear about your bad experience Keith. I'm sure that there must be the odd Spanish bad apple out there (especially on the costas) and some smaller independent Brit agents who are doing a great job.

Allthough I think yours is the only negative post re Spanish agents I have read amongst the hundreds belating the British firms.
I can only relate to our own personal experience.


[QUOTE=keithwalters]A lot of people sing the praises of small spanish run estate agencies. To be honest I hate them. Okay, so you know you won't receive a high pressured salesman, but you probably also won't receive an after sales service of any description or a decent portfolio of properties to look at.[QUOTE]

Maybe we just got lucky?
Ours had a portfolio of around a hundred properties spread over 4or 5 different towns/villages. The after sales service (3years & counting) has gone as far as being invited to dinner at his house on numerous occasions, him mucking in and helping me remove and replace the garage doors one Sunday morning, the loan of his wifes estate car to collect a dining table we had bought. The list goes on.. We now consider him and his family as true friends.

[QUOTE]The guy spoke zero english (okay I can speak spanish so not a problem for me). [Quote]
Same here.

[Quote]I asked to take a look at a couple of properties - oh no, we can't do that today, I am on my own in the office and can't leave it unattended. (so how the hell do I view the property then?) [Quote]

Maybe make an appointment??

[Quote]No new developments at all - just scruffy looking resales with ostentatious(?) furniture unfortunately included in the price and pictures of the virgin Mary hung up everywhere. Gives me the heeby jeebies. [Quote]

Thank God he did not deal in new developments. Our house came complete with a woodworm infested bedroom suite, a gas cooker that should have been condemed in the 1960's and an illuminated statue of the virgin Mary on the wall

regards
BW.

ps please take no notice of the laughing smiley at the head of this post,. It was meant to appear at the end.

keithwalters

To be fair, I wouldn't call any of the spanish agents that I met "bad apples". They weren't out to cheat me. They just weren't interested in providing me with a good service. I wasted far too much time going from agent to agent to agent who couldn't be bothered to show me anything that required dragging their arses off their seats. (I guess low commission = low motivation to sell).

The reason I posted is, as you say, there are hundreds berated GB firms, and all positive re spanish. I just wanted to redress the balance a little as I find the spanish ones pretty consistently crap.

Also, as I haven't bought on the CDS, I think I have been shielded from most of the problems that expats encounter when buying in Spain, particularly from the GB agencies.

Lynn R

WHen I was looking for a house my experience of dealing directly with small Spanish estate agents wasn't particularly positive either. Nothing really sinister compared with the big companies who specialise in the high pressure inspection trips and offloading as many identikit off plan developments as possible, but as I was only out in Spain for a week or two at a time to look at properties, their way of working drove me mad. They would listen to our requirements, say oh yes I have the perfect house for you, make an appointment for us to view it (never the same day, it was always come back tomorrow, which of course to me was a day wasted). We would go to see the house and they were either awful or over our budget. Then they would say "I have another house you will like better, I can make an appointment for you to see it tomorrow", and so it went on, only ever showing us one house at a time and days wasted in between just hanging about.

After a couple of wasted trips I contacted a property finding company run by English people living in the area we wanted to buy in, and they were fantastic. We gave them our requirements (we had decided which town we wanted to be in and exactly the kind of house we wanted) and the date we would be in Spain next. They set up appointments for us to view a number of houses that matched our spec, and drove us round to see them all. We saw six houses in one day, then another two the next day, and went back for second viewings of two houses before making our choice. Every house was in the right area, met our basic stated requirements and was within budget. We did not pay anything for the service, the company made its money by splitting the commission with the selling agents. They helped with after sales service too, including a lot of chasing up of the company fiitting my new kitchen whilst I was back in England, and paying the company's bill once I gave them permission to release the funds.

So I would definitely recommend using a property finding company if you see one working in the area that interests you. I think many of them do charge a fee but depending on how much it could even be worth it to avoid lost time and frustration. Obviously the more precise you can be about location, type of property, etc the better and also have a realistic idea of what your budget can buy in your chosen area. Doing some internet research will help but as I know others have said, agents often keep properties on their websites long after they have been sold so don't get too interested in any you see on the net.