Buying off plan (sobre plano)

Off plan — sobre plano — means agreeing to buy a home that is still a set of drawings, a licence and a building site. You sign first, pay in instalments and become the owner at the end rather than at the beginning, and that inversion is why the law intervenes.

What the buyer is actually signing

The document is a private purchase contract between you and the developing company. It is not a deed and makes you the owner of nothing: it binds the company to build one specific unit and hand it over, and binds you to pay for it on an agreed rhythm.

A contract worth signing describes what is being built in enough detail to argue about later: the plot and its registry details, the plan of your unit with its surfaces, the specification of materials and installations — the memoria de calidades — the price with the tax shown separately, the payment schedule, the completion period and the handover procedure.

Whatever the sales material promised and the contract omits is, in practice, not promised. Show-flat finishes, a parking space, a storage room and the orientation of the balcony belong in the contract or in an annex signed with it.

What the stage payments are tied to

Money moves in tranches: a first amount on signature, instalments through construction, and the balance on the day of the deed, usually as any mortgage is drawn down.

The instalments in between should attach to events a third party can verify, not to dates alone:

• the structure reaching an agreed level, or being topped out
• the roof and façade being closed
• partitions, installations and interior finishing
• the licence permitting occupation being granted, and the unit ready for handover

Where a schedule mixes milestones with calendar dates, ask what happens to the dates if the works run late. A plan that keeps collecting while the building stands still leaves the buyer financing the delay.

Why advance payments carry a guarantee

Spanish law does not let a developer treat off-plan instalments as ordinary turnover. The rule is the first additional provision of Law 38/1999 on building standards, in the wording given to it by Law 20/2015, and it bites from the moment the building licence is granted. From then on, sums taken from buyers on account of the price have to be paid into an account dedicated to the works and kept apart from the developer’s other funds, and each buyer has to receive an individual guarantee — a bank guarantee or a surety insurance policy — covering the amounts paid, with the interest the statute sets.

The guarantee exists for one scenario: the building is not delivered, or is delivered without the licence that makes it habitable. The buyer then claims against the bank or the insurer instead of queueing behind the company’s other creditors. The duty is not the developer’s alone — the credit institution opening the dedicated account has its own obligation to require the guarantee, and Spanish courts have been hard on banks that took buyers’ money without one. As the developer, SAVO opens the account and arranges the certificates.

One consequence is routinely missed: this covers any sum taken on account of the price, so a reservation fee set against the price belongs in the dedicated account and under the guarantee too. Money collected into an ordinary account “because it is not a contract yet” is precisely what the rule exists to prevent.

The buyer’s side is clerical and matters anyway: collect a certificate for every payment, check that the amount matches what left your account, and keep the set until the deed. A certificate that never arrives is a reason to pause the next transfer and ask why.

How it differs from buying a finished flat

Both purchases end in the same place, a deed and a registry entry. Almost everything before that differs.

• What you inspect. Plans, a written specification and perhaps a show flat, instead of the actual rooms, light and stairwell.
• When ownership passes. At the end of the works, not weeks after the offer.
• What protects the money. The statutory guarantee of advances across the whole construction period, not a short exposure between contract and deed.
• How it is taxed. A first transfer sits in the value added tax regime with duty on the deed, a resale in the transfer tax regime — see taxes on a Spanish purchase.
• What follows handover. A snagging list and the developer’s statutory liability for defects, not the condition you accepted on viewing.

In exchange for the wait, a buyer gets a new building, a say over finishes while there is still time to have one, and payments spread across the works.

What to settle before the first transfer

Six questions, answered on paper, before any money leaves your account:

• who is registered as owner of the plot, and what is charged against it
• whether the building licence has been granted, and by whom
• which bank or insurer guarantees the advances, and which account receives them
• how the specification treats substituted materials, and who decides what is equivalent
• what the contract says about delay, and what the buyer may do when the period passes
• which costs at the deed fall to the buyer

None of this calls for a courtroom; it calls for the documents to be read before the money moves, by a Spanish lawyer acting for you and independent of the seller. The notary who later authorises the deed verifies title and charges, not whether the commercial terms were fair to you. This article is general information, not legal advice on a particular purchase.