Reservation agreement (contrato de reserva)

A contrato de reserva is the short document that holds a flat while the real paperwork catches up. It is the smallest commitment in a Spanish purchase and also the one buyers sign fastest, often by e-mail, in a hurry, in a language they half follow.

What a reservation actually fixes

Its purpose is narrow. For an agreed period the seller stops offering that unit to anyone else, and the buyer puts down a sum to show the interest is real. In return both sides pin down the facts that are easy to dispute later: which unit, at which price, with which parking space or storage room, and by when the next document has to be signed.

It is not the purchase contract. No ownership moves, no deed is drafted, and in most versions neither party is committed to completing the sale — only to negotiating inside the window and on the stated terms.

Two details decide whether the document is worth anything: how precisely the unit and the price are described, and how exactly it says the money is treated when the period ends. The rest is usually boilerplate that nobody will ever read again.

When the money comes back, and when it does not

Reservation money comes in two forms, and the wording on the receipt matters far more than the amount:

• A sum held on account of the price. Sign the purchase contract and it counts towards what is owed. Fail to sign and it is returned.
• A deposit that works as a penalty. Walk away as buyer and the seller keeps it. In the symmetrical version long used in Spanish practice, a seller who walks away returns it twice over — but only where the document says so in those words.

Between the two poles sit the conditional clauses, and this is where a careful buyer spends attention. A reservation can state that the money comes back if a mortgage is refused, if the registry extract reveals a charge nobody mentioned, if the building licence has not been granted, or if the parties fail to agree the purchase contract through no fault of the buyer.

Silence is not neutral. Where the text says nothing about financing and the loan is then declined, the buyer argues from a weak position — and arguing happens in Spain, in Spanish, about a sum too small to litigate comfortably.

From reservation to the purchase contract

The reservation is a bridge, and it ends when the private purchase contract is signed. At that point the reserved sum is set against the price and the longer document takes over: the full specification, the payment schedule, the completion period, the handover procedure.

For a home still under construction that second signature is also when the real exposure starts, because instalments and the guarantee of advance payments both begin there. The mechanics are described under buying off plan.

Mind the window. If the period lapses with no contract and no written extension, the unit is free again, and a verbal assurance from a sales agent will not hold it.

What to read before you sign

Four checks, none of which takes more than an evening:

• The counterparty. The name on the document should be the company that owns the plot or holds the development, not an agency, and the bank account should belong to that same company. Where SAVO sells its Spanish project directly, the reservation is signed with the developing company itself, which a buyer can look up in the company register before transferring anything.
• The unit. A plot and registry reference, a unit number or a plan, the floor, and whatever parking and storage is included.
• The money. The amount, the destination account, the deadline, and the one sentence that says what becomes of it if no contract follows.
• The period. A date rather than a few weeks, plus a stated method for extending it.

Have the text read by a lawyer acting for you, or at the very least by someone fluent in the language it is written in. If you are signing a translation, ask for the Spanish version too: that is normally the text that governs, and the two are not always saying the same thing.