Tag: Buying property in Spain
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Lawyers acting for their friends (and the blurred lines in between)
This Friday, while being at the birthday party of one of my best friends in Barcelona, I had the opportunity to put closure to one of the most difficult cases that I had in my legal career. My friend was turning 49 years old and since 49 is the new 48, or so my friend…
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Practical case: phishing and bank transfers on completion of a Spanish property purchase
Phishing is a type of online scam where hackers try to trick a person to provide personal information, like passwords, bank details, etc but it could also lead to misleading lawyers and trick them to make a bank transfer to the fraudsters´ bank account. I was in a property purchase completion this week at the…
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Under-declaration of the sale price of a Spanish property
Believe it or not, I still come across property transactions where one of the parties, usually the seller, asks for part of the sale price to be paid in cash or, even worse, paid with a bank transfer but not shown on the deeds. The first one is flagrantly illegal but the second is simply…
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Buying property in Spain under-value
Spain is still recovering from the brutal economic recession that has affected its economy for the last 10 years. One of the main consequences of the recession was the collapse of the property market where properties went down in value consistently, reaching lower values that left many property owners in negative equity as their…