Most buyers meet an off-plan project the same way: a render, a show unit furnished by someone with taste, and an agent who is genuinely enthusiastic and genuinely works for the developer. None of that is dishonest, only incomplete. What is on the table is not a home but a promise to build one, and the strength of a promise sits in documents.
What separates a calm off-plan purchase from a painful one is rarely the developer’s reputation. It is the order things were done in. Buyers who reserve before anyone opens the licence file spend the whole build hoping. Buyers who read first usually find the project is sound. This is the order I use in Marbella.
Before you reserve anything
The first questions are about the land, not the building. Who holds the plot, and what sits on it? Your lawyer takes the nota simple for the finca and reads it to the end. Then the municipal side, which in Marbella has a history of its own: the Tribunal Supremo struck down the 2010 general plan in 2015, and the town hall has licensed against the 1986 plan ever since. So ask which plan your parcel is judged under, and whether a building licence for this exact parcel has been granted, with a number and a date — not “expected after the summer”. A promoter you like, on a plot without a licence, is not yet a purchase.
Then ask who you are contracting with. The company on the reservation form is often not the group on the hoarding; schemes here are routinely built through a vehicle created for one project. That is ordinary practice, not a warning sign, but it changes what “decades of experience” means inside your contract. Read the memoria de calidades too, especially the clause reserving the right to substitute materials.
- Ask which company signs your contract, and what it has completed before.
- Have your lawyer take the nota simple on the plot and check what burdens it.
- Confirm the licence for this parcel exists, and under which plan it was granted.
- Read the memoria de calidades, including the substitution clause.
- Ask to see the guarantee in your own name before you transfer anything.
- Only then reserve, and only with a deadline for the private contract in it.
The reservation, and the contract behind it
A reservation takes the unit off the market for a period and takes a sum from you. Two things belong on that page in plain words: how long the period runs, and what happens to your money if the private contract is not agreed within it. A reservation that hardens into a non-refundable deposit because a deadline passed while your lawyer waited for the licence file is fixable at signature, and almost nowhere after.
The private contract then carries the weight: a delivery window rather than an intention, a consequence if it is missed, a payment schedule you can lay beside the state of the site, completion made conditional on the occupation licence, and the specification attached rather than referred to.
The guarantee on your instalments is the most important paper you get
Money handed over before a building is finished is meant to be protected in Spain. A promoter receiving payments on account must secure their return with legal interest through an insurance contract (seguro de caución) or a bank guarantee (aval solidario) from an authorised institution, and keep those sums apart from the company’s other funds. The regime is Ley 38/1999 in the wording Ley 20/2015 gave it — BOE-A-2015-7897.
The detail people skip is that the cover is arranged buyer by buyer. A letter confirming the promotion is insured says nothing about your own position. Ask for the document carrying your name, your unit and your amounts, issued before your first transfer. If it does not exist yet, the payment schedule has got ahead of the protection.
The protection attaches from the building licence, which is why that question comes first in my sequence and not third. A scheme collecting money before the licence exists is not yet inside the regime its brochure will later point at. No certificate in your name, no transfer — even when it stiffens the conversation.
A developer who cannot produce a guarantee in your name has told you something about the project, not about the paperwork.
Handover, and the licence that makes it real
Handover is not the afternoon you are given keys. It is a short run of documents ending in a municipal signature: the works certified finished, the building declared and, where units sell separately, divided, and the town hall confirming that what stands matches what it licensed. That confirmation — the licencia de primera ocupación — is what lets utilities go into your own name.
You should also be handed the Libro del Edificio — the project as built, the reception record, who answered for what, the maintenance instructions. Ley 38/1999 requires it; buyers rarely ask. Before the notary, walk the unit with someone who inspects buildings for a living, and put the snagging list in writing with a procedure and a date.
- The building licence for the plot, by number and date.
- The nota simple on the land now, and on your unit at the end.
- The guarantee or policy in your name, covering each instalment.
- The memoria de calidades, attached to the private contract.
- The licencia de primera ocupación, before a notary date is fixed.
- The Libro del Edificio and the energy certificate, at handover.
When the date moves — and what I leave to your abogado
Sometimes it does. Marbella publishes an instruction on speeding up building-licence processing — the municipal queue is real, and no promoter controls it. What it costs you depends not on the delay but on what you agreed before it. A contract with a delivery window and a stated consequence turns a slipped date into a contractual event with a remedy; a contract with an aspiration in it turns the same slip into a conversation. So my advice is unromantic: do not sell a home, end a lease or book a move against an off-plan delivery date until the occupation licence is in hand.
None of this is legal or tax advice. I am a broker: I read these files constantly and know where the trouble sits, but what a clause binds you to, which tax treatment applies to your purchase and what a guarantee wording actually covers belong to an independent Spanish lawyer you appoint yourself. If you are weighing something off-plan in Marbella or along this coast and want a second reading of the file before you reserve, send it over.
