The realEstepona property alarm

The property alarm is a standing search: you tell us once what you are looking for, and we write to you the day something arrives that matches it. There are 4,181 properties on our books at the moment across five municipalities of the western Costa del Sol, from € 79,000 to € 24,000,000, and the feed behind that number runs every morning — which is both the reason this exists and the reason checking a website by hand does not work.

Why a property alarm beats looking

Because the good listings do not wait. On a list this size, a property that is correctly priced for its type and district is seen by everybody watching that page within a few days, and the ones worth having are usually under offer before a casual visitor comes back for a second look. The difference between hearing on the first morning and hearing in the second week is, quite often, the difference between a viewing and an apology.

What actually happens when a property arrives

The feed runs, the new listing lands on our books, and the standing searches are compared against it. If yours matches, you get an email with the property in it. There is no queue and no digest waiting for the end of the week, because a weekly summary of a market that moves daily is a summary of what has already gone.

Why this is not a newsletter

A newsletter goes to everybody and says what the sender wants to say. The property alarm goes to one person and says only what that person asked about. If nothing matches your criteria for two months, you hear nothing for two months — which is the correct behaviour and the opposite of how most property mail works.

And what it is not

It is not the whole market. We watch our own book, which covers five municipalities and includes the stock we share through the multiple-listing systems, but a property that never reaches us will never reach your alarm. Anybody searching seriously on this coast should have one or two of these running elsewhere as well, and we would say so rather than pretend otherwise.

Setting the criteria so the property alarm is useful

This is the part that decides whether the thing works, and most people set it too wide. A standing search that matches a quarter of the market is a mailing list; one that matches four properties a year is an instrument. The aim is to be narrow on the things that cannot be changed and generous on the things that can.

Be strict about position

Which municipality, which district, and which side of the motorway — because that last one decides whether the beach is a walk or a drive and it moves the price more than any number of bedrooms. Position cannot be renovated, so this is where precision pays. If you do not yet know the districts, read two or three of the area pages first and then come back.

Be strict about type and floor

A detached villa and a terraced house are not neighbours in the same search, and on this coast a ground floor flat with a garden, a middle floor and a penthouse are three different products at three different prices. Say which. A search that accepts all of them will bury the one you wanted under the others.

Be generous about the price ceiling

Set the top of the range above what you intend to pay, not at it. Asking prices on this coast carry room in them, and a search that cuts off at a round figure will hide the property that was always going to sell for less than it says. The same applies downward: a cheap listing in a dear district is usually worth a look, because the reason is often something you can live with.

And say what you will not accept

A ground floor only, no north-facing terrace, no building that needs work, no community without a lift, a minimum plot size. These negatives sharpen a standing search far more than the positives do, and they are what turn a property alarm from a stream into a short, useful list of things worth getting on a plane for.

What to have ready before the first email arrives

A standing search is only worth having if you can act on what it sends. Three things take weeks to arrange and cannot be arranged in the two days between an alert and a lost property, so they are worth doing while you wait rather than afterwards. None of them commits you to buying anything.

A lawyer who works for you

Not the seller lawyer, not the agency lawyer, and not somebody found in a hurry on a Friday afternoon. Choose the firm now, speak to them once, and have them on notice. When a property worth having appears, the question that decides whether you get it is how quickly somebody competent can read the register entry and tell you whether to move — and that is not a relationship to start under time pressure.

The NIE number and a Spanish account

A foreign buyer needs a tax identification number and, in practice, a Spanish bank account, and both take longer than anybody expects. Neither is difficult and neither obliges you to anything, but a buyer who has them is a buyer who can sign a reservation the same week. A buyer who does not is a buyer who watches somebody else sign it.

Your own ceiling, decided in advance

Write down the figure you will not go above, and write down what the purchase costs on top of the price — tax, notary, land registry and legal fees come to between a tenth and an eighth again. Do that arithmetic calmly now, because it is a different arithmetic from the one done on a terrace with a view and an agent waiting.

How a property comes off the market on this coast

Understanding this is what makes the speed matter, and it works differently from several other countries. There is no long period in which a verbal agreement can be gazumped and no sealed-bid round: a property is taken out of the market by a document and a payment, and the first buyer to produce both generally wins.

The reservation

A short agreement and a modest payment, usually held by the agency or the lawyer, which takes the property off the market for a set period while the legal checks are done. It is the step that answers the alert, and it is why being told on the first morning rather than the second week is worth something concrete rather than something theoretical.

The deposit contract

After the checks come back clean, a private contract and a substantially larger payment, with the completion date and the consequences of either side walking away written into it. From here the purchase is real in a way the reservation was not, and the remaining work is the notary appointment and the money.

What being second actually means

Usually nothing at all. A reserved property comes back to the market only if the checks fail or the buyer changes their mind, which happens, but not often enough to plan around. That is the honest case for a standing search, stated without decoration: on this coast the reward for hearing first is the chance to be the one who reserves, and there is no second prize.

What you get in the email

The property, not a teaser

Price, type, position, built area, plot where there is one, bedrooms and bathrooms, and a link straight to the full listing. No registration wall between the mail and the detail, because an alert that makes you log in to find out what it is about has wasted the thing it was built to save.

And the figures around it

Every list and district page on this site carries the live middle of its own market: how many properties, the range, the median per square metre, counted when the page loads. That is what lets you judge in a minute whether the thing in your inbox is priced sensibly for where it stands — which is the actual question, and one that no email can answer on its own.

August, and the weeks nothing happens in

The market here has a rhythm that a standing search will show you if you leave it running for a year. New listings thin out in the middle of August, when the agencies and the owners are at the beach along with everybody else, and again over the Christmas weeks. They arrive in quantity from the end of January and again in September, which is when the owners who spent the summer deciding to sell actually instruct somebody. A buyer who understands that will not read a quiet fortnight as a sign that the search is broken.

How to stop it

One click in any message. No telephone call, no form, no reason required, and no final email asking whether you are sure. A standing search that is hard to cancel is a standing search people stop trusting, and the trust is the whole of the value.

When the property alarm is the right tool

If you know what you want and it is rare

This is the clearest case by a distance. A serviced plot in a district where land almost never changes hands. A front-line flat in a complex that produces one or two a year. A village house that needs restoring. For briefs like those, a standing search is not a convenience — it is the only realistic method, because the alternative is checking a page every morning for a year.

If you are buying in six months rather than six weeks

Then do not build a shortlist now, because it will be stale by the time you can act on it. Set the search instead and spend the waiting time learning the districts, which is the part of the work that does not go out of date. By the time you are ready you will know what the figures in the email mean.

If you are selling and want to know what you are up against

A standing search on your own district and type is the cheapest competitive research there is: you see what arrives, at what price, and how long it stays. That is more useful than any valuation certificate, and it is the same information the buyer looking at your property is using. See sell your property.

And when it is the wrong tool

If you want to buy something this month, write to us instead. A standing search waits for the market to produce a match; our agents in Estepona can go and look for one, ask the other agencies, and tell you about the property that has not been advertised yet. Those are different jobs and the second one is faster.

What to look at while the property alarm runs

The type lists

Start broad and narrow down: apartments with their separate lists for ground floor, middle floor, top floor and penthouses; houses with detached villas, townhouses, semi-detached houses and fincas; and plots for the ground itself.

The place lists

The unqualified lists on this site are Estepona. Everything else is qualified by municipality: Marbella, Benahavís, Casares and Manilva, each with its own districts underneath. Reading three or four district pages is the fastest way to work out what to put in a standing search.

The attribute lists

For the things people actually buy on rather than the addresses: beachfront, golf property and pure luxury, collected on special properties. Anything still being built is on new developments, which is a different kind of purchase with its own set of questions.

And if the property is meant to earn

Decide that before the search rather than after, because it narrows the districts and it rules out communities whose statutes forbid short stays. A holiday let needs a licence and the right position for a season that is longer than July; rental services sets out what managing one actually involves.