Will you need to use a notary when buying a property in Spain?
Yes!
The completion of all purchases/sales of properties takes place in front of a third party notary. The owner and his legal advisers and the seller and their legal advisers all go to the notary to confirm the contracts have been exchanged and funds handed over. We will be going through this experience on 15th January so I will report more then.
However, you will also need a notary if you want to set up a Spanish will and like in our case you want to give power of attorney to your legal representative in Spain.
We had to arrange for a notary in the UK to sign the power of attorney forms which were approved in the UK and then sent out to Spain.
The notary society http://www.thenotariessociety.org.uk/ helped identify local notaries in Leicestershire. Although, we did actually ask three different notaries to quote and confirm they could support us and only one person actually replied. For some reason notaries in the UK are obviously not in need of new clients!
We used the services of Anthony Holt – http://www.anthonyholt-notarypublic.co.uk/ and found him very helpful. He saw us out of office hours which made life easier for both my husband and I who work and have busy diaries. Anthony was familiar with the issues of buying a property in Spain and he knew the area we were planning to buy in.
Anthony witnessed the signing of the paperwork and sent it off to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then arranged for the verified documents to be sent via courier to Spain.
Another job was ticked off the list as we moved closer to owning our own place in Spain.