We have already gone through the steps taken to calculate your budget in previous chapters. Before you start looking at properties you need to calculate your budget for purchasing the property and your budget for maintaining it and paying taxes. If you are planning a permanent position, it is at this stage where you may need to start putting your team together and picking a financial advisor to help you calculate your income and liabilities once you transfer your tax residency to Spain. You should also consider talking to a mortgage broker and discussing pre approval at this point.

You are likely to view multiple properties and you are unlikely to want to go through the process of calculating the purchase costs and taxes for every property prior to viewing so, once you have established your approximate price range, location in Spain and whether you are looking for a new build or resale, calculate the purchase costs of a couple of different properties to get a rough idea of purchase costs as a percentage of the purchase price in that area. You can use this to make a quick assessment of each property and then, if you are considering progressing further, make more detailed calculations at that point. Running costs are a little more difficult to calculate without access to information that is not publicly available and so you will need to calculate what you can afford (and are willing to pay) on an ongoing basis for taxes, fees and maintenance.

Keep a checklist of the questions you need to ask the seller or agent to establish the running costs of the property. Again the agent is likely to give an estimation when viewing (few will know the exact figures or have the details with them) but if you are interested in proceeding you can establish those costs in detail before making an offer.

One piece of advice I want to stress at this point is not to overstretch yourself. It’s something that I see often. Agents will always assume that you have some more money that you’re not telling them about and will try to show you properties above your budget, also, in my experience, buyers almost always have expectations that don’t quite match the reality on the ground.

You’ve probably seen TV shows that never mention purchase costs. Subconsciously, those price expectations - which are already 10-15% below the real cost - are hard to shift. If you fall in love with a property, it is very easy to decide that you will find more money elsewhere or that you will forgo some other luxury in order to cover ongoing costs.

Buying a property in Spain is almost always a lifestyle decision. I am almost certain that if you are reading this you are looking for a reduced-stress lifestyle. If you over stretch yourself you won’t get that. You will worry about monthly bills, or what will happen if you suddenly need the contingency funds that you decided to add into your budget.

If you don’t end up rethinking, pulling out before completion, losing your deposit and putting yourself back to square one, you may end up living in a home that feels like a ball and chain. Neither of those options are stress reducing.