Your first contact when you decide to buy property in Spain will almost certainly be an estate agent.

In many countries, an estate agent is a registered professional who can be held financially responsible if he intermediates in a sale and the terms later turn out to be falsely based.

In Spain there is no law regulating real estate agents. Anyone at all may act as intermediary in property sales. This means it is difficult to hold an estate agent responsible when a purchase goes wrong. If your estate agent causes you to suffer loss, either through negligence or honest error, you will have hard time obtaining any recompense.

Once you have decided to buy a property through an estate agent, use a Spanish lawyer to assist you with contracts, payments and taxes involved when buying a property in Spain. Use the right professional for the right job. The estate agent will make you happy by choosing the property which suits you the best and, the Spanish lawyer will make you feel relaxed and sure that the provisions in the contract do not contain any tricky clauses working to your disadvantage, if the Lawyer are obliged to be members of the seller really holds clear title or if there are unpaid taxes or fees on the property.

Lawyers are obliged to be members of the The Bar Association (the College of Lawyers), the professional organization that watches standards. Every member lawyer has an insurance policy to cover professional negligence. You can complain directly to this body about the activities of one of its member lawyers.

Both professionals; agents and lawyers have different obligations. For your benefit, neither the lawyers should be involved in the intermediation, nor the agents should  substitute the job of the lawyers.