A villa on the Moraira coast is not a larger version of an apartment purchase. The price is higher, but so is the number of things that can go wrong, and most of them are invisible in the brochure.
What is different about a villa
Plots on this coast are rarely simple. Boundaries drawn decades ago do not always match what is fenced today. Pools, guest annexes, terraces and retaining walls are frequently built after the original licence. And on the first line — El Portet, Cap d’Or, Fanadix, Pla del Mar — the plot may be affected by coastal easements that restrict what can ever be built or extended there. We go through all of this before you sign anything: see what actually needs checking when you buy in Moraira.
What this looks like in practice
These are the kinds of situation that arise on villas in this price range in Teulada-Moraira. They are illustrations of the issues, not accounts of particular transactions.
- A front-line villa above €1.5 million where part of the terrace and the pool deck sit within the coastal protection easement. The house is perfectly saleable; what the buyer cannot do is what he was planning to do — extend towards the sea.
- A villa of around €1.2 million in a gated urbanisation where the guest annexe and the garage were built years after the original licence and never regularised. The seller believes it is “all legal because it has been there twenty years”. It is not the same thing, and it affects both the price and the resale.
- A hillside plot where the fenced garden is visibly larger than the registered plot, because a strip of neighbouring or public land was absorbed decades ago. Nobody notices until the buyer’s own survey measures it.
- A villa bought for holiday letting where the urbanisation’s statutes prohibit short-term rental outright, whatever the tourist licence would have allowed.
We have acted for buyers on purchases of €1.8 million and above, including transactions where coastal easement issues had to be resolved before completion.
Buying through a company
Some buyers hold a Spanish villa through a non-resident company, usually for succession or privacy reasons. It can make sense, and it can be an expensive mistake. It changes how the purchase is taxed, how the property is later sold, how it is inherited and what has to be declared each year. We tell you plainly which of the two applies to your situation before you decide, not after.
The community you are buying into
Many of the best villas in Teulada-Moraira sit inside gated urbanisations. Their statutes are binding on you from the day you sign: they can limit works, external alterations, short-term letting and the use of common areas, and they can commit you to future levies already approved before you arrived. We read them and tell you what they say.
Holiday letting
If part of your plan is to let the villa when you are not using it, that has to be checked before purchase, not after. Licensing is regulated, and some communities prohibit it outright regardless of what the licence would allow.
Succession
Under the European succession regulation (EU Regulation 650/2012), you may be able to choose the law of your nationality to govern your estate. For a buyer from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom or the United States, that choice — and how your Spanish will is drafted alongside your home-country will — decides what happens to the villa and what your heirs will pay.
How we work
We are independent lawyers. We do not act for estate agents, developers or sellers, and we are not paid by them. The great majority of our purchases are completed without the buyer travelling to Spain: with a power of attorney, we handle the process through to signature at the notary.
Disclaimer. The information on this page is general in nature and does not constitute legal advice. Every property and every transaction is different, and the applicable rules may change. No decision should be taken on the basis of this page alone without obtaining advice on your specific case. Tomas Ballestero Lawyers accepts no liability for actions taken in reliance on this general information.
