CITRINE GAVE US THE CONFIDENCE TO BUY IN SPAIN

A big thanks you to Nick and Alison for assisting us in buying our house in Quesada.

We came across Citrine via the “A Place in the sun” website and initially found their website the easiest to use and very helpful to store properties and review what we were interested in.

We decided to make some viewings and contacted Alison with our list of properties and using her knowledge of the area Alison was able to help us to shortlist the properties quickly identifying our requirements and pointing out some of things we would like or not like about the properties we had chosen. The final result was a smaller number of houses within our budget and tailored to our idea of what we wanted.

This gave us the confidence to arrange our plans to travel to Spain and we made arrangements to meet Citrine a week or so later.

We were met by Nick who drove us around the properties we had picked and worked really hard to help us achieve what we needed from our short visit, however the thing we found most helpful was Nicks knowledge of the area and his understanding of the things that would be important to us a new buyers in Spain. While driving from house to house he provided us with an in depth tour of the area and all the places and areas of interest in the locality.

During our first visit it became clear that what we had picked to view were not really the sort of houses we wanted to live in and with just a few hours of driving and discussing things with Nick and Alison it helped us to understand not only where we wanted to live but also what sort of house we wanted, more importantly it helped us understand how we were going to live and get the best from our visits/life in Spain.

Towards the end of the trip Citrine helped us re-evaluate our requirements and made some further viewings for us that they thought we would like based on our discussions in Spain.

The last house we saw really stopped us in our tracks and made us think we could definitely live here and from that point on we really didn’t want to see anything else.

The house needed some work to bring it back to its best which would normally have put us off any kind of purchase in a foreign country, but with Citrines help we felt confident that we could get people to help us with what we needed. Having been through the process of buying and refurbishing their own property Nick and Alison fully understand the worries that new buyers have about getting work done in a foreign country and over the years have built up a list of trusted people that support them and their clients.

After showing initial interest Citrine negotiated a general agreement on the price with the sellers for us so we were in a position to move forward, but at that point Alison suggested that we should wait before formalising our offer until we were 100% sure and visit the property one more time and suggested that we meet a builder and Architect at the property to look at the works, identify any problems and get an idea of the costs.

Citrine made all the arrangements for us and a week or so later we flew back to Spain and met up with all the parties which Alison completely arranged for us so all we had to do was turn up at the right time.

This gave us the confidence to formalise our offer which then took us to the next level of commitment which is paying the deposit and starting the legal process. . . .!

Having read a couple of forums while we were looking we saw a number comments regarding not using a solicitor put forward by the estate agent, however one of Citrines trusted partners is Silvia Galve (SGM Abogados) who has an office very close to Quesada. During our very short visit Alison suggested we meet Silvia and make our mind up as to whether we wanted to work with her, which we did and from the very first meeting at her office we knew that we were in very safe and competent hands with Silvia and her team.

We engaged their services and with a little less than 24 hours from travelling home Silvia managed to help us get our NIE numbers, open a Spanish bank account and sort all of the paperwork required for our purchase.

The legal process was complete very quickly (4 weeks) and despite some initial complications regarding discrepancy’s around deeds and registers SGM worked really hard for us to get everything compliant and legal and we felt confident in Silvia that she would not allow us to complete until everything was correct and legal.

On the day before and the day of signing Citrine and SGM planed everything to the minute and it all went very smoothly we walked through the property with the sellers to check everything was Ok and were picked up Citrine the next day to go to the Notary for the big signing and handover. Everything went so smoothly that all we had to do was sit, smile, shake hands and collect our keys. Any concerns about language or legal issues were completely taken away as we were accompanied by Nick and Silvia who translated for us and helped through the whole process.

We have now been in our house just over a week and continue to benefit from advice and help from SGM and Citrine whenever we have questions or are unsure about anything, we have engaged the services of the a number of Citrines trusted partners for translation and builders work.

A really big thank you to Nick Alison and Silvia for helping us buy our dream home in Quesada, if we hadn’t met up with this team I am pretty sure we would be still at home (thinking about moving to Spain) but watching the snow fall instead of enjoying our new home in the Spanish sunshine.

With Kind Regards Steve and Heather Boxer.