About this site

Why this site exists

The United Kingdom government publishes a page called How to buy property in Spain. It is genuinely good. It names the nota simple, it names the Colegio de Registradores, and it tells you to instruct an independent lawyer who specialises in Spanish land law.

It also does not contain a single price, fee, tax rate or timescale for the purchase itself. It never says what is inside a nota simple. It does not mention the contrato de arras, which is the moment a British buyer irrevocably commits money. And it was last updated on 13 May 2021 — before the digital nomad visa existed and before the immigration regulation that governs the NIE today was written.

This site is the missing half of that reference. It prints the numbers, names the articles, dates every figure, and says where each one came from.

Who writes it

Helen Marsh writes and checks every page here. That is a pen name, and this paragraph is where we say so rather than leaving you to find out.

The reason it is a pen name is the same reason there is no photograph and no string of letters after it: a byline on a site about somebody else's largest transaction should carry a function, not a costume. Helen is not a solicitor, not an abogado, not a registrador, not a surveyor and not a tax agent, and no sentence on this site will suggest otherwise. What the byline means is that one identifiable person is answerable for every figure on the page, and that when a figure is wrong there is somebody to write to.

What this site does not do

We sell nothing. There is no report, no subscription, no price list and no checkout.

We have never checked a property for anybody, and we do not intend to. We hold no property data. We do not query the Registro de la Propiedad, the Catastro or any other register on your behalf, and the box on this site that asks for an address looks nothing up — it exists so that a person writing back knows which property you meant.

We cannot obtain a NIE for you: the regulation keeps the word personalmente and the counterparty is the Dirección General de la Policía. We do not file tax returns, draft contracts, supply model documents, arrange mortgages or translate anything. We explain all of those. Explaining is in scope. Performing never is.

What we ask for

One email address, and only if you want it. If you give it, we send one confirmation email and nothing else until you click the button inside it. After that, at most one email a month, telling you when a figure, a fee, a rate or a procedure on this site has changed. One click stops it. The privacy notice sets out the rest.

How we work

Every figure on this site carries the month and year it was verified and a link to the source it came from — a statute on the BOE, a register's own tariff page, a ministry, a tax authority, or gov.uk. Prices on the comparison pages are re-read every 90 days, and a row that cannot be re-read is deleted rather than carried forward.

Where we do not know something, the page says so. There are things on this site labelled as unverified, and they stay labelled until somebody reads the source. That is the whole method, and it is set out at Sources and method.

Who runs it

BSI OÜ, an Estonian company, registry code 14591080. We have no office and no establishment in Spain, the United Kingdom or Ireland. The full details, and the public register link that lets you check them in one click, are on the legal notice.