Buying a property in Nerja is straightforward on paper. You view through agents, agree a price verbally, pay a reservation fee of €3,000 to €10,000 to take the property off the market, and your lawyer runs the legal checks. Then you sign the contrato de arras with a 10% deposit, which makes the deal binding in both directions, you lose the deposit if you walk away, the seller pays double if they do. If you need a mortgage, count on at least 30% down as a non-resident and make sure the arras includes a financing clause, because the bank lends against its own valuation, not your agreed price. The finish line is the notary, where you sign the deed, pay the balance and get the keys. That is the whole process. Now for the part nobody explains.
Every agent showing you properties is paid by the seller, works on commission with no salary behind it, and gets paid only if you buy. That is why the service is “free” to you and why, whatever concern you raise, the answer is always that it is not a problem. It also explains a local habit you will meet without recognising it: agents in Nerja will try to register you as their client, sometimes just by taking your details before a viewing. That registration exists to protect their commission, and it can tie you to whoever registered you first, even if another agency later shows you the same property on better terms. Ask what you are signing before you sign it.
Then there is the expensive one. Nerja is full of properties where a garage or storage room has been converted into a studio or an extra bedroom. Furnished, photographed, counted in the square meters you are paying for. Very often that space is not registered as habitable, which means it legally does not exist as living area and cannot be legally rented out. And many of these rooms can never be fixed, because habitable rooms in Andalusia require a ceiling height of 2.50 metres, and you cannot add height to a concrete slab. Plenty of agents genuinely do not know this rule. The ones who do rarely mention it. Either way, the day you try to sell or apply for a tourist licence, the problem is yours.
The pattern repeats through the whole process. Reservation contracts are often written to protect the agency, not your deposit. Community minutes can hide an approved derrama that becomes your bill the day you sign. The deed can describe eighty square meters while the property clearly has more, which means something was built that may not be legal. None of the people in the transaction are paid to point any of this out to you, and by the time these things surface, your deposit is usually already on the table. There are good, honest agents in Nerja, but they are rare, and you cannot tell which kind you have from a friendly first viewing.
So before you fall in love with anything, check the numbers yourself. Our Nerja property market tool shows what properties in each area actually go for, based on 759 listings we analysed one by one, and our property purchase calculator shows the true total cost of your purchase with real Andalusian tax rates, roughly 9% on top of the price. Both are free. And if you want someone in the room who works only for you, that is our job, for a flat fee, from first viewing to keys. Write to info@nerjawithsanna.com before you start looking, that is when we can help you most.
