Buying A Property

In October 2021, my husband and I decided to buy a property in Fuerteventura. As per usual, we have done a lot of research on the internet. Our main priority was the location and of course, our budget. Having been on a holiday on the south of the island in Jandia, we wanted to find out more about the north, Corralejo. We focused our search in this area of the island and our main resource was the website A Place In The Sun. We narrowed down a list of properties that interested us and got in touch with the estate agent located in Corralejo.

On the day of our appointment with the estate agent, the lovely and ever so cheerful agent Alex, picked us up from the hotel that we were staying at and took us to view 2 properties in Corralejo. We were not impressed with the first 2 properties. We just didn't get the feeling of "our forever home". So back to the drawing board we went and Alex suggested a different location, about a 45 minute drive down south of Corralejo, a little town called Costa De Antigua, on the east coast of the island.
As it was our first time being on the east coast, we weren't very keen on looking at properties in that area but Alex drove around Puerto Del Rosario and Caleta De Fuste, pointing out landmarks and interesting places that are within easy commute from Costa De Antigua.

Finally, we arrived in a quaint little village. We drove past a couple of holiday resort hotels, an English pub, an Irish bar, a couple of other English little cafes and restaurants, a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, a couple of mini-markets until he finally pulls up in front of a gated urbanization. As we walked through the gate, the first thing that greeted us was the seaview at the far end of the complex. We then turned into one of the villas and he said, "here it is".
And there it was indeed! A detached, 3 bedroom villa with a front porch, wrap around garden, a plunge pool, large garage and a roof terrace with sea and mountain views. It had only come on the market and we were the first ones to view it. Myself, my husband and our daughter were in unison, this is "the one".
As fate would have it, it didn't matter where we planned to buy. We didn't find this property, it found us.

As we were already back in the UK at the time when the process began, a purchase contract was written up by the agent and they emailed it to us. We digitally signed the contract and emailed it back to them. The first thing we had to do was to put down a deposit, which was equilvalent to 10% of the "agreed" price
(yes, of course we haggled 😁). We had to go into our UK bank to transfer the money to the estate agent's account. We had to show our passports, proof of address and proof of source of funds. The next (and very important) step we did was to hire a Spanish law firm in Fuerteventura who would take over the rest of the legal steps of the purchase. Below is the timeline of what happened next:

• No. 1 - Formalities
  
  Signing a contract officially hiring them as our lawyer to act on our behalf.


• No. 2 - Power Of Attorney
  
  They emailed us the Power of Attorney document detailing all actions they would undertake on our behalf towards the purchase of the property including opening and operating a Spanish bank account and applying for our NIE


• No. 3 - Getting the Power of Attorney document and copies of our passports Notarised
  
  We used a local Notary Public near us. On the day of our appointment, we brought with us the Power Of Attorney documents, our passports and copies of the data page of each passports. He bound all of the pages together with his Notary ribbon and seal. This is very important as it is required by the Foreign Office to get the documents legalised. The Notary that we used was very helpful and explained it all to us. We also found similar information about Notary seals on this website, Vanner Perez Notaries. He stamped every page of the bound documents with his official stamp and signed and dated each stamp.


• No. 4 - Getting the Notarised documents Legalised by the Foreign Office
  
  Next, we applied online on the GOV UK website to get the documents legalised with the Hague Apostille stamp. There were 2 options for the Apostille stamp - a paper based which is stamped on the actual documents (for this, the documents must be sent by post) and an e-Apostille stamp (you'll need to upload the documents and you'll receive the stamp electronically). We opted for the paper based stamp as instructed by our lawyer. Once we have finished the application online, we received the confirmation email with details of the application and what to do next including where to send the documents. We sent the documents via Registered Post.


• No. 5 - Sending the original Notarised and Legalised documents to Fuerteventura
  
  As soon as we receieved the documents back from the Foreign Office, we sent them to our lawyer via Fedex. When they received it, the first thing they did was to apply for our NIE so they could open a bank account for us. For this, they requested a copy of our latest P60s and National Insurance numbers. Also, at this point, they have been liaising with the estate agent to finalise the sale. They emailed us a copy of the land search report and a copy of the purchase contract countersigned by estate agent.


• No. 6 - Completion Date
  
  By the 3rd week of December 2021, our NIE is done and our bank account is set up. All that was left was for us to transfer the money into our Spanish account, this included the outstanding balance of the purchase price, legal fees and lawyer fees. An agreed date was set for the exchange to take place.


• No. 7 - Post Completion
  
  Hooray! On New Year's eve of 2021, we got the keys to the villa! We watched the fireworks on our roof terrace and slept in an empty house (it's okay, we pretended we were camping). We started the new year in our new "forever home" ♥
  In the next few weeks that followed, our lawyer arranged the direct debit set up for the electric, water, council tax and home insurance and alarm system payments. They also completed the Title Deed registration. Around 8 weeks after the completion date, we were able to collect the Title Deed from their office in Puerto Del Rosario.

Buying a property anywhere in the world is a complicated and long process but we were very lucky to have found a great estate agent and an amazing law firm in Fuerteventura who helped and guided us throughout the whole process.