Why Don’t Real Estate Agents in Spain Respond? My Personal Experience as a Buyer & Inspector
Prefer listening to the podcast version – no problem!
Link to Part 1
Link to Part 2
Let me start with a clarification:
👉 This article is based on my personal experience as both a buyer and an inspector.
👉 It is not meant against real estate agents in general — I know several highly professional ones whom I deeply respect.
But I cannot ignore a reality that many foreign buyers in northwestern Spain (and beyond) share with me time and again:
Real estate agents simply don’t respond. Emails remain unanswered. Calls are returned late, if at all. Even serious buyers feel like they are knocking on a closed door.
Why does this happen in a country where property sales to foreigners hit record highs in 2024, with nearly 90,000 foreign-buyer transactions?
1. Low Barriers to Entry: “The Job of Last Resort”
In Spain, anyone can become a real estate agent. There is no mandatory national licensing system, no university degree, no exam. The only legal requirement is to register as self-employed (“autónomo”) under the IAE tax code.
As a result, Spain counts around 60,000 active agents spread across 27,500 agencies. Of these, nearly 44% are solo agents, often working from home, with little formal training.
For some, real estate becomes a “last resort job” — a way to try their luck in sales. Many agents drift in and out of the market after a few transactions, leaving buyers frustrated with inconsistent service.
2. Knowledge Gaps: More About Paperwork, Less About Property
The real estate business is complex:
- Market dynamics
- Urbanistic law
- Technical building quality (statics, plumbing, electricity, roofing, carpentry, heating systems, energy efficiency, …the list goes on.
- Valuations and due diligence
- …
Most agents know the purchase process from arras to notary, but often little more. Few are trained to spot structural problems, assess land use legality, or explain energy efficiency.
This knowledge gap makes many agents reluctant to engage deeply with buyers’ questions — especially when they fear they cannot provide solid answers.
3. “Inmoturismo”: The Tire-Kickers
Agents are also wary of “inmoturismo” — people booking viewings as a weekend activity, with no real intent to buy. In tourist-heavy areas, this is a daily occurrence.
To filter serious buyers, some agents simply don’t reply to certain profiles, while others have started charging for property visits. Unfortunately, genuine foreign buyers often get caught in this filter, too.
4. Agents Work for Sellers, Not Buyers
One of the biggest misconceptions foreign buyers bring from their home markets (UK, US, Germany, the Netherlands) is the role of the agent.
In Spain, the agent is contractually tied to the seller, paid by the seller, and incentivized to achieve the highest price in the shortest time.
Buyers, in reality, have no representative at the table. This explains why agents focus their energy on captación (sourcing new properties) and satisfying sellers’ demands — not on nurturing buyers.
5. A Fragmented & Competitive Market
The Spanish property market is huge:
- 1.2 million properties for sale at any given time
- Around 20 listings per agent on average
- Portals like Idealista (45% market share) and Fotocasa (28%) dominate visibility
With non-exclusive listings (75% of properties appear with multiple agents), agents often compete against each other for the same sale. In this race, speed trumps service, and buyers’ emails get lost in the noise.
A comparison of markets:
Spain:
• The market shows “strong fragmentation”
• 92% of rental properties are owned by private individuals vs only 8% by legal entities
• Characterized by “the prevalence of private landlords and small-scale landlords”
USA:
• Top 20 companies control 61.2% of sales volume
• Large consolidation among major franchises (Keller Williams, Compass, eXp Realty, etc.)
UK:
• Clear consolidation trend with major M&A activity
• Top 25 estate agency groups combined had 30.63% of all UK sales in 2021, though this has slightly decreased to 27.81% by 2023
• Industry described as having “low market share concentration” but dominated by larger players like Connells Group
Germany:
• Described as having a “fragmented” market but with major international players like CBRE, Jones Lang LaSalle, Engel & Völkers controlling significant market share
• Ongoing consolidation pressures due to operational efficiency needs
Netherlands:
• Major players include CBRE Group, Jones Lang LaSalle, and other large institutional players
• Market dominated by larger institutional investors and companies
France:
• Higher fragmentation than other developed markets, but still more consolidated than Spain
•Professional real estate agents hold a regulated monopoly on transactions
RE/MAX and Century 21 perfectly illustrate the market structure differences:
• In Spain: They exist but don’t dominate due to the highly fragmented, locally-driven market structure
• In USA and other developed markets: They represent the large consolidation forces that control significant market share through their extensive franchise networks
6. Buyers’ Agents and Relocation Agencies: A Different Approach
To fill this gap, a small but growing niche of buyers’ agents and relocation agencies has emerged in Spain.
Unlike traditional agents, buyers’ agents represent the buyer exclusively. There are only around 500 specialists across Spain — less than 1% of all agents — but they play a critical role for foreign clients. Their services include:
- Property searches across multiple networks
- Urbanistic and legal due diligence
- Price negotiations, often saving clients 5–20% of asking prices
- Full administrative support from NIE numbers to notary translations
They charge fees directly to the buyer — typically a fixed fee (€3,000–€15,000) or 1–3% of the purchase price — but often save more than they cost by avoiding bad purchases and negotiating better deals.
Meanwhile, around 150 relocation agencies help with the broader challenges of moving to Spain:
- Visa and residency paperwork
- School placement, healthcare, utilities
- Rental searches or property acquisition support
- Cultural orientation and ongoing support
These agencies have grown rapidly since Brexit and the introduction of Spain’s digital nomad visa. For British buyers and international families, they provide a lifeline through Spain’s bureaucracy.
Both sectors remain small, but their growth shows a clear trend: foreign buyers are increasingly willing to pay for independent, buyer-focused services rather than relying on seller-side agents alone.
Professionalization Is Coming – Slowly
Regions like Catalonia (AICAT), Valencia (RAICV), and Canarias (RAIC) now require agents to be registered, with training, insurance, and clean records. Still, only 46% of agents nationwide are under such systems.
What Does This Mean for You as a Buyer?
Until stricter regulation becomes the norm, buyers must be cautious.
If you are considering buying property in Spain, you need to keep in mind:
- Agents represent sellers.
- Not all agents are trained.
- Your emails might not be ignored — they may just not fit the agent’s priorities.
- Buyers’ agents and relocation specialists exist — but are rare and costly.
This is why many foreign buyers turn to independent professionals like iNMOspector.
We provide:
- Technical inspections (structural, pest, energy certificates)
- Urbanistic checks (land registry, legality, building rights)
- Valuations (to negotiate with facts, not feelings)
- Legal support (arras, notary, contract review with our lawyers)
And after purchase, we help with renovations, licenses, and building projects via iNMObuilder.
Final Thought
Spain is a wonderful place to live, retire, or invest. But the real estate market here operates differently from what many international buyers expect. If your emails go unanswered, don’t take it personally. Understand the system — and make sure you have an independent ally on your side.
That’s exactly the role we at iNMOspector plays.
AND: Please let me know what your thoughts are about this. I am seeing it as a real estate inspector working a lot with estate agents and their clients as well as a real estate agents´client myself. iNMOspector is always open to learn and to collaborate with service provider who can improve the overall buyer’s experience in Spain – from finding the right property to adapting it to their taste and needs – so please do contact us!
