Buying Property in Spain: How to Protect Your Deposit

By the time most buyers ask a lawyer to look at a purchase, they have already signed something. Usually it is a reservation form the agent produced on the day, with a few thousand euros already transferred. Sometimes it is a full private contract in Spanish that nobody translated.

That signature — not the notary appointment three months later — is the moment the purchase becomes real. It is also where almost every problem we are asked to fix began.

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THREE DOCUMENTS THAT LOOK THE SAME AND ARE NOT

Spanish practice uses three different things at this stage, and they do very different jobs.

The reservation. A short document, normally the agency's own form, taking the property off the market for a week or two against a small payment. It ought to be a holding step and nothing more. The difficulty is that agency forms are commonly drafted so the reservation money is forfeited if the buyer does not proceed — including when the buyer does not proceed because a lawyer has found something wrong with the property. Read it before you pay, not after.

Arras penitenciales. The classic deposit contract under article 1454 of the Civil Code. Either party may withdraw: the buyer loses the deposit, the seller returns double it. Changing your mind is expensive, but it is possible.

A binding private purchase contract. Neither side may simply withdraw. If the buyer does not complete, the seller can go to court and demand that the sale goes ahead, or claim damages beyond the deposit.

On paper these can be a page apart in wording. Which one you have signed depends on the exact drafting — and the drafting is the seller's or the agent's.

WHAT HAS TO BE VERIFIED BEFORE YOU SIGN, NOT AFTER

Everything that protects a buyer belongs in front of the deposit contract, because afterwards your negotiating position is gone:

- A current nota simple from the Land Registry confirming who owns the property and whether it carries a mortgage, an embargo or a right of way.
- Whether what is physically there matches what is registered and licensed — the pool, the terrace, the extension.
- Community of owners: fees up to date, and any special levy already voted but not yet charged.
- IBI, rubbish rate and utilities, all of which follow the property rather than the seller.
- Whether anybody is living there, and under what right.

THE CLAUSES THAT MATTER

A deposit contract that protects the buyer names the property by its Land Registry and cadastral references, not just its address. It states the price, the payment schedule and a completion date. It puts on the seller the obligation to deliver the property free of charges, tenants and debts, and free of undeclared building work. It lists what is included — furniture, appliances, the boat mooring, the parking space — because what is not written is not included.

And it says what happens if things go wrong: if the buyer's mortgage is refused, if the seller cannot produce a habitation certificate, if a charge appears that the seller said was not there.

WHERE THE MONEY GOES

A deposit should not be paid into a private account against nothing. It is normally held in the lawyer's client account, or paid to the seller under a contract that says precisely when and how it comes back.

One week spent on checks before signing is worth more than any amount of legal work afterwards. Once the deposit contract is signed, a lawyer's job changes from protecting you to limiting the damage.

We act for buyers and sellers only — never for the agent or the developer — from Jávea since 1992, in English, French and Spanish, across Dénia, Moraira, Benissa, Benitachell, Altea and Valencia. The first consultation is free.

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This article is general information, written in September 2026. Spanish law — and tax rates and time limits in particular — changes, and every case turns on its own facts. It is not legal advice on your situation and no client relationship arises from reading it. Take advice on the specifics before you act.