Some agents dedicate their efforts either to just selling New Build properties, or having a wing of their agency that is dedicated to the sale of New Builds. As I mentioned earlier, the commissions offered for the sale of a new build property are more generous than those offered by private vendors of resale homes, however there is good reason for this.
An agent dealing on the Costa Blanca alone will potentially have to deal with up to a hundred developments and multiple promoters. Each development might have several models of property, and even identical models will have varied prices depending on their position within the development. As a result, there are thousands of permutations of property for sale. As units sell and new phases are released, prices and availability constantly change, making it an immense challenge to maintain an up-to-date portfolio. This often involves having a dedicated team working on uploading new developments to the company’s website and database while keeping existing developments up to date.
Given that there is very rarely any exclusivity over the sale of new properties (at least not to the end buyer), property portals are an ineffective way to advertise. There are often multiple duplicate listings of new developments, and ironically, the agents who don’t do a good job of keeping portfolios up to date benefit when builders increase prices and everyone but them updates their prices on the portals. With portals being ineffective, agents need to look at more expensive and time-consuming methods of marketing, such as overseas exhibitions and direct online advertising where keywords are in high competition and expensive.
New build agents often use the inspection trip model of selling, which again increases their overheads. Given the long lead times on off-plan properties, it can often be over a year from making a sale to receiving the full commission.
If you are considering purchasing an off-plan property, it can be beneficial to use a dedicated agent. They will be familiar with all the developments in a given area and will likely spend a lot of time with you exploring the area and properties (don’t forget, they earn good commissions and will work hard for them). They will be very useful to you during the purchase process. While your lawyers will deal with the progress on paper, you need someone other than the builder to keep an eye on physical progress and, crucially, to conduct snagging checks before you complete your purchase. For obvious reasons, you can’t have the builder doing their own snagging, and it's an unnecessary expense to travel to Spain to do it yourself.
It may be tempting to approach the builder or promoter directly, hoping to negotiate a better deal since they wouldn't have to pay an agent's commission, but this approach rarely succeeds. Promoters are heavily dependent on agents to market their developments, and if they were to gain a reputation for undercutting their partners, they would be biting the hand that feeds them. Furthermore, offering a reduction in the listed price of the property can create headaches for the builder. The taxman may notice the difference between the listed asking price and the notarized sale price and suspect tax avoidance. Likewise, the lowered value could cause problems with the builder's lender.