[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":123},["ShallowReactive",2],{"content:cities:en":3,"content:service:pisos-en-venta:en":42,"content:lexikon:en":110,"content:pseo:en":111},[4,17,29],{"slug":5,"name":6,"state":7,"facts":8},"benidorm","Benidorm","Costa Blanca, Spain",[9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16],"The city is built around two urban beaches, Levante and Poniente, separated by the rock of the old castle; the viewpoint on top of it is the Balcón del Mediterráneo, and the old town occupies the isthmus between the two bays.","The vertical skyline is a planning decision rather than an accident: the plan approved in the middle of the twentieth century chose tall buildings with open ground between them instead of closed city blocks, which is why the seafront is a line of towers.","Buyers here read the city by district before they read square metres: Levante and Rincón de Loix to the north-east, the old town in the centre, Poniente to the south-west, inland neighbourhoods such as Salto del Agua, and the western edge where the built-up area continues into the separate municipality of Finestrat.","Tourism runs all twelve months, with a winter season of residents from northern Europe, so shops, the urban buses and medical services stay open outside the summer — which is not true of every town on this coast.","Services in English, German and Dutch are normal rather than exceptional here — doctors, banks, trades, bars — which is the practical reason many foreign buyers start their search in this city rather than in the smaller towns around it.","The TRAM narrow-gauge tram has its terminus in the city, linking Alicante in one direction and the Marina Alta and Dénia in the other. The AP-7 motorway and the N-332 coast road give road access, and Alicante-Elche airport is a little under an hour away.","The housing stock mixes buildings from the nineteen-sixties and seventies with recent schemes, so buying here means looking at the age of the building, the state of the communal installations and any approved derrama — a levy voted for works — before looking at the view from the terrace.","A large part of that stock is used only a few months a year, and it shows in the owners' associations: tight budgets, poorly attended meetings and repair decisions that drag on. The minutes of the last meeting say more about a building than its advert does.",{"slug":18,"name":19,"state":7,"facts":20},"villajoyosa","Villajoyosa",[21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28],"Villajoyosa and la Vila Joiosa are the same town: the second is its name in Valencian, and both appear in official documents, so a buyer will meet either spelling. It belongs to the Marina Baixa comarca in the province of Alicante, and its centre lies about eight kilometres along the coast from Benidorm.","The fishing port is still working and the lonja still auctions the day's catch, which is why the town's economy does not rest entirely on the summer season.","Chocolate has been made here industrially since the nineteenth century: the Valor factory and its museum are in the town, and cocoa sits alongside fishing, retail and construction in the local economy.","The painted houses along the old seafront are the image the town is known by; tradition holds that each fisherman painted his own so he could recognise it from the sea. The quarter is a protected ensemble, so façade, joinery, roof and colour are conditioned by the town hall — which changes the budget and the timetable of any renovation there.","The Roman past is visible: the Torre de Sant Josep, a funerary monument, stands just outside the centre, and the municipal museum displays the finds from the Roman town the modern one sits on.","The TRAM tram stops in the town: one direction leads to Benidorm, the other to Alicante. The N-332 runs through the municipality, the A-7 and AP-7 give access inland, and Alicante-Elche airport is around forty kilometres away.","Hospital Marina Baixa, the public referral hospital for the whole comarca, is inside this municipality — a detail that weighs for anyone buying to live here all year rather than in August.","For a buyer the practical difference from Benidorm is scale: the seafront is not vertical, the buildings are lower and new construction is far scarcer, so each individual scheme counts for more in the decision and comparable sales are harder to find.",{"slug":30,"name":31,"state":32,"facts":33},"alicante","Alicante","Province of Alicante, Spain",[34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41],"Alicante, Alacant in Valencian, is the capital of the province of the same name and the seat of its Diputación and of the provincial offices of the state administration, so a good part of the comarca's formalities end up passing through the city.","Santa Bárbara castle crowns Mount Benacantil in the middle of the city; at its foot lie the old town and the Santa Cruz quarter, narrow streets with almost no vacant plots left, where what moves is refurbishment rather than new building.","The port sits directly against the city centre and combines freight, cruise calls and regular passenger lines; the Explanada promenade and the Postiguet beach district lean straight onto it.","Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández airport is in the neighbouring municipality of Elche, about ten kilometres from the centre, and it is the air gateway for the whole Costa Blanca, including Benidorm and Villajoyosa.","The city hosts the European Union Intellectual Property Office, and the main campus of the University of Alicante is immediately to the north in San Vicente del Raspeig; both sustain a demand for housing that does not depend on the tourist season.","Alicante Terminal station has high-speed services to Madrid and local services towards the south of the province and Murcia, and the TRAM along the coast to Benidorm leaves from the city centre.","New construction concentrates in the northern extensions and around Playa de San Juan, several kilometres from the centre and linked to it by tram, while in the consolidated districts the activity is replacement and renovation of existing buildings.","For a buyer, Alicante is the least seasonal market in the province: there is demand for primary homes all year, which is why its districts are compared on schools, transport, parking and services before they are compared on distance to the beach.",{"slug":43,"title":44,"teaser":45,"metaTitle":46,"metaDescription":47,"h1":48,"intro":49,"forWhom":50,"includes":55,"howItWorks":71,"model":87,"faq":90,"related":106},"pisos-en-venta","How to read a Spanish advert","Almost every figure in a Spanish advert is true and almost none of them is measured the same way. What each square metre means, what the photographs leave out, and how much the person who published it can actually promise.","Property listing in Spain: how to read one properly","Property listing in Spain, decoded: útil, construida and computable floor areas, what «a reformar» commits anyone to, and what the publisher can promise.","Reading a Spanish property listing without walking into surprises","A Spanish property listing is a sales text, not a register entry: almost all of its figures are true and almost none of them is measured the same way. Knowing who wrote the advert and which word it used for each square metre removes half the surprises of a viewing.\n\nYou are not looking for lies, you are looking for translations, and here some of them are literal: the decisive words stay Spanish on every document. The same flat can appear with three different floor areas, with its condition described in two elastic words, and with a gallery chosen so that nothing is left over. Three questions and one dimensioned plan correct all of it.",[51,52,53,54],"Buyers comparing homes across Spanish portals who find that the square metres do not match from one advert to the next.","Buyers flying in for a few days who want to decide in advance which viewings are worth the time.","Buyers who meet «a reformar» or «para entrar a vivir» and cannot tell how much either phrase commits anyone to.","Buyers who cannot tell whether they are talking to an agency, to a portal or directly to the company building the flats.",[56,59,62,65,68],{"title":57,"text":58},"The three floor areas behind one property listing","Superficie útil is the floor you can walk on, measured inside the walls: it answers whether the table fits. Superficie construida is measured outside and includes walls, partitions and service ducts; it is usually the figure in the deed and on the developer's price list. And there is a third number that mixes the interior with part of the terrace: the common commercial practice is to count a fraction of the terrace, often half, and add it. That mixed figure — some adverts call it computable or «superficie total» — is not standardised and depends on who calculated it. One short question settles it: of the metres you advertise, how many are under a roof and enclosed? Expect the answer to be in metres, not feet, and expect the deed to use construida.",{"title":60,"text":61},"«A reformar», «a estrenar», «para entrar a vivir»","All three describe condition and none of them obliges anybody by itself. «A reformar», for renovation, means the seller already assumes work is needed, and usually points at old installations: wiring, plumbing, exterior joinery. «Para entrar a vivir», ready to move into, means habitable, not updated. «A estrenar», brand new, tells you nobody has lived there — not that the sale is a first transfer: a never-occupied flat resold by an investor is second hand for every legal purpose. What matters sits underneath those labels — whether the energy certificate is current, whether the building has passed its technical inspection, whether the owners' meeting has approved a derrama, a one-off levy for works on top of the ordinary service charge — and none of that follows from the adjective. It is asked.",{"title":63,"text":64},"Photographs say less than they appear to","Spanish estate photography is shot wide-angle at the best hour of light, and that is not a trick, it is the trade. The informative part is the inventory of what is missing. No picture of the kitchen, the bathroom or the drying area usually means those are the least presentable rooms. No picture of the entrance hall, the stairs or the façade means the building is. No shot from the window means the view is the neighbour. And an image of a home not yet built is a 3D visualisation rather than a photograph: it should say so, because materials, planting and furniture can change in the finished building.",{"title":66,"text":67},"The dimensioned plan is the most honest part of the advert","A plano acotado — a plan with measurements written on it — gives in one page what no gallery gives: the real layout, the metres of each room, the width of the corridor, where the load-bearing walls run, which rooms could be sacrificed and which way each window opens. If it carries a north arrow it also gives the orientation, which on this coast decides the temperature of the home in August. An advert without a plan is not suspicious, but a plan without dimensions is decorative: good for imagining, useless for comparing. In new construction the dimensioned, signed plan is also a contractual document, and it belongs in the contract as an annex.",{"title":69,"text":70},"Who publishes a property listing, and what each of them can promise","A portal is a noticeboard: it hosts the advert, does not answer for its content and has never seen the home. An agency acts on the owner's instructions and can commit only what those instructions allow, which almost never includes the final price or the payment terms. A promotor sells what it builds itself and is the only party that can commit specifications, dimensions and timing, because it is the party that will answer for them; in exchange it will only ever show you its own scheme. The same flat published by three senders produces three different texts, and the question that orders everything is whose advert it is: whoever signs it is whoever has to stand behind it in writing afterwards.",[72,75,78,81,84],{"title":73,"text":74},"First, who signed the advert","Before reading the features, find the sender: trading name, company, telephone and, where it appears, a professional or regional agent registration number. An advert with no identifiable sender is an advert nobody will stand behind. That detail also explains the tone of the text and how much of what it promises can travel into a contract.",{"title":76,"text":77},"Then, which floor area is quoted and where it is recorded","Ask for the figure with its surname — útil, construida, with common parts — and ask which document it appears in. Construida is recorded in the deed and in the división horizontal; the catastral figure sits in the Catastro, and the two do not always agree. That discrepancy is ordinary and can be corrected, but it is better known before you negotiate than at the notary's desk.",{"title":79,"text":80},"Next, the referencia catastral and the nota simple","The referencia catastral is the twenty-character code that identifies the exact property in the Catastro, with its recorded surface and boundaries. The nota simple, a short extract from the Registro de la Propiedad, names the registered owner and lists the mortgages, charges or seizures over it. The two registers are separate things and do not check each other. Both searches are yours to make without the seller's involvement, and together they turn an advert into a specific property.",{"title":82,"text":83},"How to compare two listings that look identical","Put both homes in the same unit before comparing: útil in both cases, terrace counted separately, and the recurring costs — community charge, the municipal property tax known as IBI, approved derramas — written beside each one. The ratio between útil and construida tells you by itself how much is lost to walls and corridors. In that format, two adverts that looked equivalent almost never are.",{"title":85,"text":86},"Finally, the viewing with the advert printed out","Go with the text and the plan in your hand and test what they claim: the rooms that were advertised, the orientation, the state of the exterior joinery, damp on ceilings and at the foot of the walls, the water pressure, the noise with the window open. Whatever the advert promised and the viewing does not confirm has to end up written into the contract or taken out of the price.",{"title":88,"text":89},"What you can check yourself, and whom you ask for the rest","Without asking anyone: the referencia catastral, surface and boundaries in the Catastro; the owner and the charges in the nota simple from the Registro de la Propiedad; zoning and licences at the ayuntamiento; and the sender's company in the commercial register of the country where it is incorporated. In new construction the licencia de obra also carries a municipal file number.\n\nFrom the seller or the agency you ask for what is in their hands: the dimensioned plan, a current certificado de eficiencia energética, the statutes and the minutes of the last owners' meeting, the certificate that the service charges are paid up, the latest IBI receipt and, in a new home, the memoria de calidades and a copy of the guarantee covering sums paid on account.\n\nTwo habits save a foreign buyer more than any translation. Ask who pays the person advising you, because in Spain the agency usually works for the seller even when it is entirely pleasant to you. And remember that the notary who reads the deed aloud is a public official checking the document, not your lawyer; if you want someone on your side, you hire an abogado separately. Nothing here is a promise from us and none of it replaces either of them. It is the list of what can be checked and the name of whoever holds it — plus one rule that ends most arguments: what does not end up in the contract or in a signed annex was never promised, whatever the advert said.",[91,94,97,100,103],{"q":92,"a":93},"Why does the same flat show different floor areas on two portals?","Because each advert quotes a different surface without saying which. One may be giving the construida from the deed, another the catastral figure, another the interior plus part of the terrace. None of them is necessarily lying: they are answering different questions. It is settled by asking for the figure with its surname and for the document it appears in.",{"q":95,"a":96},"Does a terrace count as floor area of the home?","It is floor area of the home, but it is not enclosed covered space, which is why commercial practice counts only a fraction of it. The problem appears when it is added without warning: a flat with a large terrace can be advertised with the same metres as one with a much bigger living room. Ask for the two numbers separately and compare interior with interior.",{"q":98,"a":99},"Can I trust the service charge quoted in the advert?","As an order of magnitude, not as a fact. The charge is approved by the owners' meeting each year and can rise, and on top of it sit derramas, one-off levies voted for building works that never appear in the ordinary charge. The documents that settle it are the minutes of the last meeting and a certificate showing no debt to the community.",{"q":101,"a":102},"What does it mean when an advert gives no exact address?","It is common and rarely serious: the seller is keeping the neighbours from knowing, or another agency from poaching the instruction. What should be given before you travel is the area precisely and the referencia catastral once you ask seriously. If that is withheld too, what is missing is not the address: it is the identification of the property.",{"q":104,"a":105},"Are the images of a new scheme photographs of the building?","No. While the building is unbuilt they are 3D visualisations and must be identified as such. They show the intention of the project: geometry and layout usually hold, while materials, planting, furniture and views can shift. What binds is not the image but the dimensioned plan and the memoria de calidades that get signed.",[107,108,109],"memoria-de-calidades","cuota-de-participacion","promotor-constructor-y-api",[],[112,115,119],{"service":43,"city":18,"title":113,"h1":114},"Villajoyosa or Benidorm, for a buyer","Villajoyosa or Benidorm: how the two towns differ and what that means if you are choosing",{"service":116,"city":18,"title":117,"h1":118},"obra-nueva","What a developer must show you before you reserve","New build in Villajoyosa: the six documents to see before you hand over a reservation",{"service":120,"city":5,"title":121,"h1":122},"inmobiliaria","Who sells you the flat and who signs the contract","Estate agency in Benidorm, developer or builder: who sells you the flat and who answers afterwards",1791227523712]