Alicanteos

Renting a flat or a house during the holiday can be a better deal than the hotel, especially if you are in family, in Alicante you can rent a 3 bedrooms townhouse for £350 €530 (at today change rate), 2 weeks during the summer at any hotels in Alicante will cost you much more than that.
The holiday renting market is regulated, if you follow some recommendations you can avoid bad surprises, consumer organizations are getting thousand of complaints each year, because people don’t know their rights and obligations.
The most common complaints are:

• The house is of a lower standard than advertised
• Blatant hygiene fault
• Lesser lodging capacity
• Electricity malfunctioning
• Distance from the beach not respected

The very first thing to do is to ask for a written description of the property you are interested to rent. This document must contains the description of the property, the exact location, renting period, description of installations and services included, price and taxes (VAT).
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The British consul in Alicante, has 150 active cases where people have been conned or have not complied with Spanish law. One of the most common pitfall in buying properties in Spain is to buy land that are owned by someone else than the seller or worse buy land where you can not built.

Did you know that if you want to buy land on the beach you need authorization from some authorities, the seller may not tell you that. They are regulation for rustic land and urban land, buying a plot in a rural area is particularly complicated process because it is up to you to make all the necessary controls. You have to go at the town hall and the Planning Department there you will find out all necessary information.

• Does the seller has the right to sell this land ? (They are more than 50,000 houses built illegally on the Costa del Sol)
• Boundaries mark of the plot.
• Risk of flood near river
• Check for future development in the area around the plot; such as of roads, train or others.
• Building Permission

I spent 3 days in Plasencia a small town in the north of Extremadura. During the summer the region is very dry and hot, I felt it as soon as I went out of the train, 3 hours of train from Madrid to Plasencia, there is no faster way to go there except by car. In that month of July, the weather was above the 40 degree mark every days. Plasencia is really two towns, the new Plasencia with more or less recent buildings, construction dating after 1900s and the old Plasencia. The tourist area is of course, in the old town, business wise the taxi drivers know when the Madrid train arrive and they are there waiting clients from that train. I took a taxi to my hotel situated in the center of the old town.
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Dinero Negro (black money) is a common practice used in Spain whereby you have two prices for a property. One price is the actual price declared on the deed (escritura), the other price higher is the price that you will pay to the seller, the price on the private contract. The difference between the two prices will be in cash to the seller thus the name black money. By doing this, the seller will pay less plusvalía (capital gains tax), and the buyer have to pay less VAT (6% of the second-hand property price), its also reduce the notary fee and legal stamps. Usually, an estate agent calculate his commission on the higher price not the one declared on the deed.

A recent report estimate the price which figures on the deeds of second-hand house sales is actually 30% - 40% lower than the real price, this is a huge hole. The practice is common that in many case if you refuse do it the seller will look for another buyer. Fortunetely, they are more sellers prepared to declare the real price, recently, the socialist government of Jose Luis Zapatero started some reforms to reduced tax frauds , below is a few of the

• The means of payment (cheque, cash….) must be included in the property deeds at the time of the sale
• It will become mandatory to take the private contract (with the real price) to the property register.
• The catastral number must be included in the deeds and also in all gas, water, electricity bills, to make it easier for tax inspectors to determine whether or not a house is occupied (many people rent out property but do not declare the rent paid to them.

If you are encouraged to pay with black money you can mention the points stated above. Try to always work with registered estate agents who are aware of the laws.