Property inspection on the Costa del Sol
A technical inspection is a specialist standing in the property and writing down what is actually wrong with it. We do not do that part ourselves. We bring in the inspector or the architect, we get them in on time, and we make sure what they find turns into something: a price, a condition, a repair before signing, or a reason not to buy at all. We also say when a survey is not worth commissioning, because it is not needed on every purchase.
Who actually looks at the building
Four different people look at a property before you buy it, and only one of them is looking for defects. That is worth knowing before you assume somebody has already checked the thing you are worried about.Specialists handle the expertise. We make sure it all connects: that the right person is booked, that they get in, that their report arrives before the deadline it has to beat, and that what they wrote does not simply sit in your inbox.
| Who | Whose side they are on | What they actually do |
|---|---|---|
| Technical inspector or architect | Yours | Looks at the property, the structure, the roof, damp, the installations and the pool, and writes down what they found. This is the real technical check, and on older properties it finds the things that otherwise show up after you move in. |
| The lawyer | Yours | Checks the paper, not the building: ownership, charges and debts, community debt, building legality, the occupancy licence, planning defects. A property can be in perfect physical condition and still be a bad purchase, and the reverse is also true. |
| The bank’s valuer | The bank | Sets a value for mortgage purposes. Finding defects is not their job. It is not a technical survey and it does not replace one. |
| The seller’s agent | The seller | Represents the other side, which is their role and is perfectly legitimate. Their description of the condition is a sales description, not an inspection. |
| Tradesmen | Neither, until you hire them | Come later, once there is something to price or to repair. A quote for a job is not a survey of the building either, and a builder who wants the job is not the person to tell you whether the job is needed. |
| Arevont | Yours | Not a technical role at all. We say when a check is worth commissioning, arrange the person, get them access, hold the timing against the signing date, and take what they found into the negotiation with your lawyer. |
Do you carry out the inspection yourselves?No, and we would not want you to accept it if we did. We are not architects or building engineers. We arrange the specialist, we are there when it suits you, and we handle everything around it. The report is theirs and their name is on it.
What the bank’s valuation is not
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding on the buyer’s side of a Spanish purchase, and it costs nothing to clear up. If you are taking a Spanish mortgage, a valuer will visit the property. Somebody official will walk around it with a measuring device. It is very easy to conclude that the building has therefore been checked.It has not. A mortgage valuation exists to tell the bank what its security is worth. The valuer confirms the property matches its paperwork, notes the apparent state of conservation, measures and photographs. Everything in that report is oriented towards a number, and the number is for the lender.
What this report answersWhat it still does not tell you
- The bank’s valuation (tasación)
- What the property is worth as loan security, under the national valuation rules. The visit is real and the technician is qualified, but the brief is value, not defects. Damp behind a wardrobe does not change the figure the bank needs.
- The lawyer’s due diligence
- Whether the thing you are buying is legally what it appears to be: who owns it, what it owes, whether it was built and extended with permission, whether the occupancy licence exists. It answers nothing about whether the roof leaks.
- The energy performance certificate
- A letter grade the seller is required to hold. It is calculated from the construction and the installations, usually without opening anything, and a poor grade is a running-cost signal rather than a defect list.
- The listing and the agent’s description
- What the property is being sold as. "Good condition" and "recently renovated" are ordinary sales language with no defined meaning, and the photographs were taken to make you want to see it.
- The technical inspection
- The condition of the building itself, written by somebody with no interest in the sale going through. This is the only one of the five whose purpose is to find what is wrong.
None of the other four is dishonest. Each of them answers its own question well. The mistake is arithmetic: adding four reports together and assuming they cover the building between them.
Sources
The bank is sending a valuer. Do I still need an inspection?They answer different questions. The valuer tells the bank what the property is worth as security. Looking for defects is not part of that job, so a valuation does not replace a technical inspection and cannot be read as one.
When a survey is worth it, and when we say it is not
A technical inspection is voluntary in Spain. There is no legal requirement to commission one, and most Spanish buyers do not. That is not a reason to skip it, but it does mean nobody in the process will chase you for it, and it means the honest question is not "should everybody do this" but "would it change anything here".We arrange an inspector where it is appropriate, not on every purchase. Roughly, this is where the line falls for us.
- An older property, and anything with a roof of its ownAge is the strongest single reason. A house carries its own roof, its own drainage and often its own pool and garden, and every one of those is a system that wears out on a schedule nobody wrote down for you.
- Visible works, extensions or a conversionWhenever something has been added, closed in or turned into a bedroom, there are two questions: was it done well, and was it done legally. The inspector answers the first, the lawyer the second, and they are worth asking together.
- Anything with damp signalsFresh paint on one low wall, a dehumidifier in the corner of a viewing, a ground-floor apartment with a garden above the level of the floor. Damp is the defect this coast produces most reliably and the one that photographs worst.
- A property that has stood emptyMonths without anyone in it and the small failures accumulate quietly: seals, pumps, the pool plant, the boiler, an air conditioning unit that has not been run in two summers.
- A large purchaseNot because expensive properties are worse. Because the same proportional risk is a bigger number, and because at that level the finding usually is not visible, which is precisely why somebody has to go and look for it.
- When you cannot be there yourselfIf the decision is being made from Czechia on photographs and our video, a specialist standing in the building is the part of the process you are missing, not an extra.
And the other half, which is the part we would rather tell you before you spend the money. On a new build inside its warranties, the job is not a survey, it is a handover check, and it belongs on the sibling page below. On a small, recent, well kept apartment with nothing unusual about it, a survey often confirms what a careful viewing already showed, and the sensible spend is a specialist quote on the one thing you actually care about instead.The test we apply is simple: could the finding realistically change your decision, your price, or a condition in the contract. If the answer is no, we will say so rather than book somebody. It is not our money and it is not our afternoon either, so we have no reason to arrange a check that does not earn its keep.
Second hand against new build: why the check is a different job
The physical inspection looks similar in both cases. What it is FOR is completely different, and the difference is who is obliged to fix anything afterwards.
| What differs | Second hand | New build |
|---|---|---|
| Warranty | None. The seller answers only for hidden defects they knew about and concealed, and the window for bringing that claim is short. | Ten years on the structure, three on the installations, one on the finishes. Payments made before completion are covered by a bank guarantee. |
| Who fixes what is found | You do, once it is yours. That is why the finding has to arrive before the signature, while it can still move the price or the conditions. | The developer does, at their cost, which is what the snagging list exists to record. |
| Condition and fittings | Depends on age. Expect to replace the kitchen and the bathrooms eventually, and expect other things to start putting their hands up over time. | Everything new. What gets checked is whether it was finished properly and whether it matches what you chose. |
| Energy | Lower classes and higher consumption than a new build. It shows up in the bills, not in the purchase price. | The highest classes, lower consumption, lower bills. |
| What the finding is worth | Leverage, or a reason to stop. It changes your decision and your number. | A work list with a deadline on it, and someone contractually obliged to clear it. |
This is also the honest argument against assuming a resale property is the cheaper route. A second hand property more often means renovation or a run of gradual jobs, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the air conditioning, plus the thing nobody expected once a wall came down. You can easily end up at the same money or higher. An inspection is how that arithmetic stops being a surprise and becomes a number you had before you signed.
Sources
Do I need this on a new build?Usually not in this form. A new build is covered by the ten, three and one year warranties, so the job at that point is the handover check and the defect list against the developer, which is a different service. Where a new build has been standing finished and unsold for a long time, or where you are buying a key ready unit from a private seller rather than from the developer, the resale property logic applies again.
The seller says the property has no defects. Is that binding?It is not the same as a warranty. On a resale property the seller answers for hidden defects they knew about and concealed, which puts you in the position of having to prove what somebody else knew, within a short deadline, after the property is already yours. That is a much weaker place to stand than a finding you had before signing.
What happens after the report lands
A report that changes nothing was not worth commissioning. This is the part of the service that is actually ours, and it is the reason we would rather the inspection happened early enough for it to matter.
- We read the report with youReports come in Spanish or in English and they are written for a technical reader. We go through it with you and separate the three groups that always exist: things that are normal for a property of this age, things that will cost money soon, and things that change the answer.
- The findings that need paper go to the lawyerAn extension that was built without permission, a terrace that has been closed in, a pool that does not appear in the registry description. The physical finding is the start of a legal question, and that question belongs to your lawyer before it belongs to a builder.
- The finding can get a number attached to itA defect without a repair cost is not a negotiating position, it is an anxiety. Where the report itself quantifies the work, that figure is what we take to the seller side. Where it does not, we can obtain a repair quote from a tradesman before the price conversation happens, so that what is being asked for is a specific sum for a specific repair rather than a feeling about the property. Say the word and we get it; it is worth the few days it takes on anything you would actually argue about.
- Where it needs an architect, we bring one inSome findings are past what an inspector answers. Whether an extension can be regularised, what a reform would really involve, whether the layout you are planning is possible at all, and what any of it costs. That is an architect’s question and we put one in front of it. It is a separate specialist with a separate fee, quoted to you directly, and none of it comes through us.
- What is fixable becomes a demand, not a complaintWith the report in hand, we and your lawyer set out precisely what has to be documented, corrected or accounted for, and put it to the seller’s side. That is a very different conversation from asking for a discount because the property feels tired.
- It lands in the price, the conditions, or the deadlineA finding can come off the price, become a condition to be met before completion, or become a repair the seller carries out first. Which of the three is right depends on the finding and on how motivated the other side is, and that is what the negotiation is for.
- Sometimes the answer is to stopWe have told clients not to proceed when a legal or a technical check turned up something serious. Nobody enjoys that conversation, and it is still cheaper than the alternative. Not buying is a legitimate outcome of a purchase process and we treat it as one.
What a technical inspection actually looks at
A survey is a visual, non invasive inspection of the parts of the building that can be reached. The specialist writes down the condition of each element, the defects they found, how serious those appear, and which items need opening up before anybody can be certain. Scope varies with the property and with who you send, so treat this as the shape of the job rather than a fixed list.| What gets looked at | Why it decides something | What we do with the finding |
|---|---|---|
| The building | ||
| Structure and foundations | Cracking, movement and settlement are the findings that can end a purchase rather than reprice it. They are also the ones a viewing is least likely to catch, because the visible symptom is often a hairline in the wrong place. | If it is serious, the report says what needs investigating further and we stop the process there until that is answered. Nothing gets signed against a structural unknown. |
| Roof, terraces and waterproofing | On this coast a roof spends most of the year doing nothing and then earns its money over a few days of heavy rain. A flat roof or a terrace above a living space is where water gets in. | A repair estimate becomes a price argument. Standing water, failed membrane or a terrace draining the wrong way becomes a condition before completion. |
| Façade, rainwater and drainage | Guttering and downpipes are often simply not fitted here, so rain runs down the wall and into the lower part of it. It is normal locally and it is still your damp problem afterwards. | We ask what the community has already decided about it, since a façade is usually shared and the repair may be a levy rather than your own job. |
| Damp and water ingress | Rising damp is common in ground floor apartments and in houses built without a damp proof course, and fresh paint hides it perfectly for a viewing. It is the most reliably underestimated defect on the Costa del Sol. | Readings are taken with a moisture meter rather than by eye. A reading is a number you can put in front of a seller, which a hunch is not. |
| Inside the property | ||
| Windows, doors and carpentry | Old aluminium without a thermal break, single glazing and failed seals are the difference between an apartment that holds its temperature and one that runs the air conditioning all summer and is still noisy. | This is usually a cost, not a crisis. We price it and it goes into the offer as a known number rather than a surprise in year one. |
| Electrics | An installation from a different decade can be safe and still be far short of what current rules would require, and it decides whether you can add an induction hob, a car charger or a second air conditioning unit. | A functional check of the consumer unit, the circuits and the earthing. If the report flags it, an electrician quotes the upgrade before you commit, not after. |
| Plumbing, hot water and drainage | Pipework age, water pressure, how the showers and the kitchen actually drain. Slow drainage and low pressure are lived with daily and are invisible in every photograph ever taken. | Taps and outlets are run, drains are watched. Where it points at pipework in the walls, that is exactly the kind of item that has to be settled before signing rather than after. |
| Air conditioning and heating | Units have a working life and a service history, and "it works" in April is not the same as it works in August. Replacement is a real number on a whole property. | Heating and cooling are both run where possible. Age and condition go into the running-cost picture with the energy class. |
| Kitchen and bathrooms | On a second hand property these are the two rooms you should expect to replace at some point. Knowing whether that point is now or in eight years is most of the renovation budget. | It becomes a planned cost with a date on it, which is the difference between a renovation and an emergency. |
| Outside, and what is shared | ||
| Pool, plant and irrigation | A private pool is a machine as well as a hole in the ground: pump, filtration, pipework, the shell itself. Leaks are expensive and are not visible while the pool is full. | We get a pool specialist to it where the report raises anything, and the cost of running it goes into your ownership numbers. |
| Garden, boundaries and what is built where | What is on the plot should match what is on the plan. A porch, a storeroom, a pergola or a converted basement that appears in reality and not on paper is a legal problem wearing a physical disguise. | The physical finding goes straight to your lawyer. This is the single most common place where a technical check turns into a legal one. Be clear about who answers what: the inspector describes what is standing there, and whether that matches the Land Registry entry and the cadastral record, and whether it can be regularised or has an occupancy licence, is the lawyer’s question and not the inspector’s. Three records and one building, and it is normal for them to disagree. |
| Communal areas and pending works | Lifts, garage, roof, pool and façade are shared, and so is the bill. A community that has already voted through an expensive repair has committed you to your share of it before you arrive. | The physical condition comes from the inspection, the minutes and the debts come from the lawyer, and we make sure the two are read together rather than separately. |
| Energy class and running costs | An older property sits in the lower classes with higher consumption, and that shows up every month rather than once at the notary. | It goes into the ownership cost picture alongside the community fee and the annual taxes, so the cheaper purchase is compared honestly against the newer one. |
Where the inspection sits in the purchase
The whole purchase is fifteen steps from the first call to the keys. The technical check has a window, and the window is narrower than most people assume: it has to be commissioned early enough that a finding can still change something, and completed before the signature it is meant to inform.Steps 8, 9, 13 and 14 of 15
- Reservation, and the moment to decideWhen you find the right propertyA reservation takes the property off the market while it is checked. This is the point to decide whether a technical inspection is part of that checking, because the reservation contract is also where it is agreed what happens to the deposit if a check turns up a problem. Deciding afterwards is what makes people feel they have to go ahead.ResaleThe reservation deposit and the agreed conditions. Price, dates and fittings are settled here too, which is exactly what a finding can reopen.
- The checks run togetherUsually two to four weeksThe legal due diligence starts after the reservation and this is the natural slot for the technical inspection to run alongside it. Same period, two different specialists, two different lists. It matters that they overlap, because a finding on the building very often turns into a question about the paperwork, and you want both people still working when it does.
- The last check before signingBefore completionOn a second hand property we go back and check it again before the signature, with you or on your behalf. This one is ours and it is not a survey: we confirm the property is in the condition that was agreed and that the fittings listed in the inventory are still there. If you want a professional technical check by an architect or an inspector, we arrange that separately.New buildOn a new build the process depends on the developer. Some run the snagging before ownership transfers, others afterwards. That is the sibling service.ResaleThe condition against what was agreed, and the inventory against what is still in the property.
- Notary and keysCompletion dayThe deadline everything above is working backwards from. After the deed is signed the property is yours in the condition it is in, and a finding that arrives on day two is a repair bill rather than a negotiating position. You do not have to be there in person if your lawyer holds the power of attorney, and we are there either way.
The same property, checked two ways
What the technical side of a purchase looks like without a buyer’s agent, and with one.| On your own | With Arevont | |
|---|---|---|
| Who tells you the condition | The seller’s agent, whose job is to sell this specific property, and whose description of the condition is a sales description. | A specialist with no interest in the sale completing, whose whole brief is to find what is wrong. Our job is to get them in on time. |
| Finding the person | Searching in a language you may not read, with no way to tell an inspector from a builder looking for the repair job that follows. | We arrange an inspector or an architect from people we work with, and we say which of the two the property calls for. |
| Timing | Commissioned late, once the reservation is signed and the deposit is committed, which is when a finding has the least leverage. | Booked into the same window as the legal due diligence, so a finding still has somewhere to go. |
| What the report leads to | A technical document in Spanish, and a conversation with the other side about it in Spanish. | We read it with you, split it into what is normal, what is a cost and what changes the answer, and turn the last of those into a demand with your lawyer. |
| What it costs you | The inspector’s fee, whoever arranges them. | The same inspector’s fee, invoiced to you directly. The arranging, the access, the timing and the argument afterwards are free, because as a buyer you never pay us anything. |
The property that was much older than its photographs
One property we went to see was simply far older than the listing pictures suggested. Nothing in the photographs was false. They were well lit, well framed and taken at the property’s best hour, and none of them dated the place. Standing in it took about ten seconds to answer a question the entire listing had left open. That is the mild version of this problem, the version you catch by turning up. The expensive version is the one you cannot see at all: what is behind the wall, under the terrace and inside the installations. Nobody catches that by turning up, which is the entire argument for sending somebody whose job it is to look for it.A viewing tells you the age of a property. An inspection tells you the cost of it.
How much does it cost?
- Buyer0 €You pay us nothing, whether or not you buy anything, and whether or not a check we arranged talks you out of a property.
- Developer or seller
- New build
- 2,5 to 6 %
- Resale properties
- 1,5 to 4 %
- Inspector or architectInvoices you directly for the survey. We are not paid by them and we do not take anything for the referral, which is the same arrangement we have with the law firm we recommend.
Our part is free. Deciding whether a check is worth it, arranging the specialist, getting them access, holding the timing against the signing date and taking the findings into the negotiation costs you nothing, because as a buyer you never pay Arevont anything at any point.The inspection itself is arranged separately and the specialist quotes you directly. We do not publish a price for it and we will not invent a range: the fee depends on the property, on its size and on how far somebody has to travel, and it is their fee rather than ours. You get the number before anything is booked, and you decide.What follows the report is not ours either. A pool specialist, an electrician or a builder quoting a repair invoices you for their work. Nothing gets added to their invoice on the way through us, on this or on anything else.
The property price is the same even if you go directly. For a new build, feel free to take the developer's price list and verify it.
What an inspection will not do for you
It will not make anybody fix anything. On a second hand property there is no warranty. The seller answers only for hidden defects they knew about and concealed, which means proving what somebody else knew, within a short deadline, once the property is already yours. So the value of the report is entirely in the decision you make while you still have one, not in a claim afterwards.It is not a guarantee either. A survey is visual and non invasive: nothing is dismantled, no wall is opened, and a report that says an item needs further investigation is being honest rather than evasive. Something can still appear in year two that nobody could have seen in the afternoon they were there.And we do not arrange one on every purchase. On a new build inside its warranties the job is a handover check, not a survey. On a small, recent, well kept apartment a good viewing plus a specialist quote on the one thing you care about is often the better spend. We would rather tell you that and be wrong about the fee than book somebody so the process looks thorough.
Frequently asked questions about the technical inspection
- Is a technical inspection compulsory in Spain?
- No. There is no legal requirement to have one when you buy, and most Spanish buyers do not. Nobody in the process will ask you for it, which is precisely why it has to be a decision you take rather than one you wait for.
- When do I have to commission it?
- Ideally at the reservation, so it runs in the same two to four week window as the legal due diligence and finishes before the binding contract. Late enough that you are serious about the property, early enough that a finding can still move the price or become a condition.
- What does it cost and who pays it?
- The specialist quotes you directly and invoices you, and the fee depends on the property and its size. We do not publish a figure because it is not our fee to publish. Our own part, arranging it and dealing with what it finds, is free like everything else we do for a buyer.
- What happens if the inspector finds something serious?
- It becomes a specific requirement rather than a complaint. With your lawyer we set out what has to be documented, corrected or accounted for and put that to the seller. It can come off the price, become a condition before completion, or become a repair carried out first. And if it is bad enough, our recommendation is to walk away, which we have made before.
- Can the seller refuse to let an inspector in?
- Access needs the seller’s cooperation and it is normally arranged without difficulty, usually alongside a viewing. If it is refused, or repeatedly delayed on a property you are already reserving, that is information in itself and we would treat it that way.
- Do I have to be in Spain for it?
- No. The specialist does not need you there and neither do we. You get the report, we go through it with you on a call, and if you want to see something specific we go back and show it to you on video.
