What to know before making an offer in Spain

You see a listing you like. A flat, a house, commercial premises or a plot of land. You call. You ask questions. Perhaps you arrange a viewing. Everything seems to fit. Then comes the question very few buyers ask before committing: what else is there to know about this property that I have not been told?

Almost invariably, the answer is much more than you might think.

What the listing does not tell you

Property portals show photographs, floor area, price and a description. What they do not show - either because they cannot or because it is not in their interests - is everything surrounding and constraining the property: whether it is in a flood zone, whether an electricity-line easement limits what you can do on the plot, whether the building has an overdue technical inspection, or whether heavy traffic creates noise at seven in the morning.

That information exists. It is public, held by official bodies and has been available for years to anyone who knows where to look. The problem is that it is scattered across maps, administrative registers and legislation that no buyer has time to check one by one.

Hogarfax does it for you.

What we analyse before you take the next step

When you enter an address or cadastral reference, we cross-check the parcel's exact geometry against more than twenty official data sources. The result is a property profile organised into five areas:

• Physical risks - Whether the parcel lies within an official flood extent, whether the CSN identifies a radon risk, and whether it is affected by the public hydraulic domain or maritime-terrestrial public domain. Real risks with real consequences that no property portal shows.
• Land use and restrictions - The parcel's planning classification, whether electricity lines carry easements restricting what you may build or renovate, and what the SIU says about the land.
• Surroundings and nuisances - Major roads, railways, airports and nearby industrial land. Factors that shape daily quality of life and are already priced into the market, even if the buyer cannot see them.
• Climate - The location's historical climate profile: heavy rainfall, heat, frost, humidity and wind. Not as a weather report, but to anticipate how the home and its installations will be affected.
• Condition of the property - The building's age, its floor area against minimum habitability standards, and whether its age and the applicable regional rules may make it subject to an ITE or IEE building inspection.

Is the asking price fair?

This is one of the hardest questions to answer without objective data. In Hogarfax, you can enter the advertised price and we compare it with official benchmarks based on actual transactions in the same area. The result is clear: whether the price is in line with, above or below the market. It is not a valuation - but it is a first objective indication of whether the asking price makes sense before you sit down to negotiate.

What other buyers have seen on the ground

Official data has its limits: it describes the paperwork, not day-to-day reality. That is why Hogarfax lets users report problems they discover - on a call with the seller, in a message or after a viewing.

Damp on walls or ceilings. Cracks. Leaks. Excessive noise. Persistent smells. Nearby late-night venues. Unlawful occupants. Undisclosed charges. Outstanding special assessments from the community of owners.

When several users report the same issue for a property or area, Hogarfax can alert subsequent buyers who look it up. It is collective intelligence applied to the biggest purchase of your life: you do not have to discover on your own what others have already found.

Hogarfax and the nota simple: two complementary sources

Hogarfax does not replace the nota simple from the Land Registry - it complements it.

The nota simple is the Land Registry extract showing the registered owner and whether the property is affected by mortgages, attachments, usufructs, charges or other legal situations. It is essential legal information that every buyer should request before making an offer - it is free and can be ordered online from the Colegio de Registradores.

What Hogarfax provides is different and does not overlap: physical, planning, environmental and neighbourhood information that the Land Registry does not record. A property may be properly registered, free of charges and have clear title, yet still lie in a flood zone, be subject to a power-line easement preventing an extension, or form part of a building with an overdue ITE inspection.

Together, the two sources - the nota simple and a Hogarfax report - give you the full picture before you make an offer.

When to use it

You do not have to wait for a viewing. You can run the analysis as soon as a listing interests you - before calling, before travelling and before asking for more photographs. If the report reveals a deal-breaker, you have saved yourself time and viewings. If the issue is manageable, you attend the viewing with context and specific questions. And if you decide to proceed, you have real data with which to negotiate the price.

Free. No registration. In seconds.