Free help, no obligation
HolaBlanca is the link between you and the professionals of the Costa Blanca. Answer two questions and we point you to the serious ones.
Step 1 of 2
Nobody knows which trade they need. They know where they are: looking at houses, keys just collected, two thousand kilometres from an empty house, or selling. Pick the moment and the steps come in the order they really arrive.
Ten trades stand between the day you like a house and the day the keys are yours. Most buyers meet three of them and find out about the rest afterwards. This is the order they come in.
See the professionals for this stage
Shows you houses and holds the seller's mandate. In Spain the agent is almost always paid by the seller, which is worth knowing before you take their advice on price.
What to check: A RAICV number. An agency with premises open to the public in the Valencian Community must be on that register. We show the number and the date on every listing.
1,239 registered agencies, by town ›Checks that the seller owns what he is selling, that the house is legal, that there is no debt attached to it and no charge on the deeds. This is the single most important step on this page.
What to check: The colegiado number and the bar he belongs to, and one question: who introduced him to you? A lawyer recommended by the agency selling you the house is not independent, whatever anyone says. Ask for a second name and compare.
Turns your pounds, crowns or dollars into euros on completion day. On a 200,000 euro purchase the gap between a bank and a broker is usually thousands, not tens.
What to check: Authorisation from the regulator of the country it operates from, and whether client money is held in a segregated account. Ask for the all-in rate, not the headline rate.
Finds the loan. A non-resident is usually lent up to 70 per cent of the value here, against 80 for a resident, and the difference changes what you can look at.
What to check: Whether he is paid by you or by the bank, and the binding offer (FEIN) in writing before you sign anything at the notary.
Measures the plot and puts the boundary where it really is. On rural land and on older villas, the fence and the deeds disagree more often than anyone expects.
What to check: That he is a colegiado surveyor and that the report is registered, otherwise it settles nothing with a neighbour.
Two hours in the house before you pay, and a written report on the roof, the damp, the structure and the extensions that may never have been declared.
What to check: The colegio he belongs to, and that the report names the cadastral reference of the property. A report without that reference describes a house, not yours.
Two problems that are common here and invisible in August: rising damp behind fresh paint, and termites in the roof timbers of an older finca.
What to check: That the company holds a ROESB registration for the treatment products it applies. Nobody may treat a house without it.
For a new villa, someone independent walks the house before you pay the balance and writes down what is not finished, in English and in Spanish. After you sign, the same list costs you money instead of the developer.
What to check: That the person writing it does not work for the developer, and that the report is delivered before completion, not after.
HolaOwners does this report ›Translates, with legal value, the documents a Spanish office will not accept in another language: birth certificates, powers of attorney, foreign wills.
What to check: The appointment number from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Only a sworn translator on that list produces a translation an office must accept.
431 sworn translators, town by town ›The notary witnesses the deed; the gestoría pays the transfer tax, registers the deed and puts the water, the electricity and the rates in your name.
What to check: You choose the notary, not the agency. And ask the gestoría for a written list of what it will do, because the word covers everything from a full service to a single form.
98 notaries, town by town, with the languages they speak ›The house is yours and nothing works the way it did at home. The electricity certificate, the air conditioning, the mosquito screens: eight trades, and one of them you need before the meters can be put in your name.
See the professionals for this stage
Issues the boletín, the certificate without which no supplier will put the electricity meter in your name on an older house. It is the first call to make, before the fridge arrives.
What to check: The installer registration number issued by the Generalitat Valenciana. An electrician without it can do the work but cannot sign the certificate.
Leaks, boilers, the water softener that half the houses here need because of the lime, and the pool pipework when it is shared with the house.
What to check: For gas work, a separate certification. A plumber is not automatically a gas fitter, and a gas appliance signed off by the wrong person voids the house insurance.
Cooling in August and, increasingly, heating in January: the houses here were built for the summer and are cold and damp for three months a year.
What to check: The RITE certification for refrigerant gases. Without it the installation cannot legally be signed off, and it is the paperwork an insurer asks for after a fire.
Self consumption, with or without a battery. On a house used four months a year the sums are completely different from a house lived in all year, and honest installers say so.
What to check: That the quote includes the legalisation and the connection agreement, not only the panels, and whether your urbanisation rules allow them on that roof.
Changing the locks the week you get the keys, which is the cheapest sensible thing anyone does here, and an alarm if you want a monitoring centre rather than a camera.
What to check: For an alarm connected to a monitoring centre, the company must be registered with the Ministry of the Interior. A camera you watch yourself does not need that, and does not give it either.
The four things every new owner here buys in the first summer, in that order, once the mosquitoes and the afternoon sun have made their case.
What to check: For anything fixed to the outside, ask whether the community rules and the town hall allow it. A pergola taken down again is the most expensive one there is.
A furniture pack for a new build: everything delivered and placed in one day. It is what most buyers of a new villa end up doing, because they are not here to receive twelve deliveries.
What to check: That the quote lists every room and every item, and who carries the risk if the completion date moves. It usually moves.
The work almost every resale needs: paint, a kitchen from the nineties, and a bathroom with a bath nobody uses.
What to check: For anything structural, a licence from the town hall, and a quote with a date. In this area the second is harder to get than the first.
Six or nine months a year the house is empty. Seven trades keep it alive, and the useful question is not who is cheapest, it is who answers you in your language when something breaks in February.
See the professionals for this stage
Someone local holds a key, opens up when a plumber comes, meets your guests and walks through the house after a storm.
What to check: Ask what happens to your key when that person is ill or on holiday, and get the answer in writing. It is the question nobody asks and the one that matters.
A clean before you arrive and a clean after you leave, and the changeover between two holiday lets, which is a different job done against the clock.
What to check: If the person works in your house regularly, there is an employment side to it. A company invoices you and carries that itself; an individual paid in cash does not.
Weekly in summer, fortnightly in winter. A pool left alone for three months in this climate is not a dirty pool, it is a green one that has to be emptied.
What to check: Whether the price includes the chemicals or not. That single line is the difference between two quotes that look identical.
Irrigation more than mowing. Here a garden dies in three weeks without water, and the timer is the thing that actually needs looking after.
What to check: Who pays for the water, and whether palm trees are included. The red weevil kills a palm in one season and treating it is a specialised job.
Thousands of houses here have no internet contract at all. A 4G antenna brings the signal indoors, and a 4G camera shows you the house from two thousand kilometres away without needing wifi.
What to check: That a camera may film your property only. Pointing at the street, the communal pool or the neighbour is unlawful, and a fitter who does not mention it has not read the rules.
HolaSignal fits both ›Runs the accounts, the pool and the meetings of an urbanisation. If you are not here in March you vote by proxy, and the person you give it to matters.
What to check: The colegiado number. And ask for the last minutes and the last accounts before you buy: an urbanisation with a lift to replace tells you so in those two documents.
408 registered administrators, town by town ›A policy written for a house that is empty most of the year, which is not the standard one, and someone on your side when the insurer's own expert has been and gone.
What to check: The unoccupancy clause. Most policies stop covering water damage after 30 days empty, which is exactly the situation you are insuring against.
Five trades for the end of the story, and for the part nobody plans: the tax return you owe every year, the will that decides who gets the house, and the day you sell.
See the professionals for this stage
Compulsory to sell and compulsory to rent. A technician visits, measures and registers it with the regional government. It is quick and it is often the thing that delays a sale by two weeks.
What to check: That it is registered, not just issued. An unregistered certificate is a PDF, and the notary will not take it.
Photographs taken at the right hour, a floor plan, and a virtual tour. A buyer in Norway decides from a screen, and a dark photograph taken at two in the afternoon costs a viewing.
What to check: Who owns the images afterwards. If the agency owns them and you change agency, you start again.
HolaStudio does virtual tours ›A non-resident owner files a return every year even with no income from the house. And when you sell, the buyer withholds 3 per cent of the price and pays it to the tax office in your name.
What to check: Ask who files it and who signs it, and get the receipt each year. The 3 per cent is refundable when the sale made no gain, and that claim has a deadline.
HolaOwners explains the modelo 210 ›A Spanish will covering the Spanish property costs a few hundred euros and saves your family a year. Without one, your heirs deal with two legal systems at the worst possible moment.
What to check: That it names the law of your nationality if that is what you want. European rules let you choose, and the choice has to be written down to exist.
A part load from northern Europe, or a full container. Most people who move here do it once and never think about it again, which is why nobody compares.
What to check: The insurance on the load and who is liable at the border. Since Brexit a British move needs a customs declaration, and the wrong form leaves your furniture in a warehouse.
A star rating on a lawyer or an electrician is not something we could hold up honestly across thousands of listings, and rating a professional exposes them. What we compare is what can be checked: the register, the colegiado number, the town and the languages actually spoken.
Four steps have listings, all from official registers: the estate agencies on the RAICV, the registered community administrators, the sworn translators appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the notaries in practice. The other 26 steps explain the trade and do not list professionals yet. We would rather say so than manufacture empty pages with the name of your town in them.
Transparency notice: HolaOwners, HolaSignal, HolaStudio and HolaDomus belong to the same publisher as HolaBlanca. Where they appear in a step they are marked as same publisher and placed first within their trade. Every other professional is listed too, and the full ranking rules are published.
We are opening the directory to all 30 trades. Tell us who you are, which town you work in and which languages you work in.
Not sure who you need?
Pick a trade, pick a town, and see the real listings straight away. We only ask for your address at the end, if you want the list kept.
Free. Nothing is asked of you before the results.About once a month: what changes in the paperwork and the costs of a home on the Costa Blanca, and the newly added trades.