Thread: How does this leasehold work in Spain?

Yes I agree, but do not forget that you must take over the rental agreement, to be signed with the owner of the local. To take over a leasehold, first and important is to read through the rental agreement to see, what was in the local at the begining, terms and conditions. Sometimes they "sell" things that do not belong to them originaly.

I have never been able to see how this could work. You would need a huge income to pay the lease, the rental and the ongoing expenses.

That's probably why they are forever changing hands.

Well, if you rent a local, you will need the money to do whatever you plan as a business. Leaseholds are there to take over something ready to work straight away. Sometimes some are a good investment, as the business is a good working one, and sometimes they promisse you heaven and they are not worth it. I have a friend you did a big mistake taking over a runing business. I have been lucky and my second business leashold is runing perfect.

Hi all and especially Peter. I had a leasehold business in Spain and paid 32,000 pounds for it plus a rental of 400 pounds a month. However on signing the contract it was decided by the outgoing tenant and the abogado (lawyer) that it would only state a figure of 12,000 for the lease as the outgoing tenant had to pay the owner of the property 18% commission of the total of the lease to allow him to sell on. We (stupidly) agreed. However, about a year later rumours were going around that the town hall were going to pull all the bars down in our area and compensate us as per the contract! Bad news. As it happened luckily it was put back at least 5 years because there was no government money for the project. However, to safeguard ourselves we sold the bar (unbelievably for a small profit) and yet again dealt with the contract in the same way as the previous tenant so we only had to pay the owner of the property 18% of the amount in the contract and walked away. I might add that 9 years later and still the bars are there! We did operate two more business in Spain after that but having our fingers nearly burnt so to speak refused to take on a trespaso but rented only with a small amount held by the owners as a deposit against breakages etc. Also as we were a little more "streetwise" we refused to deal with agents as we found agents were trying to take a cut of the rent in one instance (ie we found the agent told us the rental for the bar was 600 pounds a month whereas we found out who the actual owner was, contacted him direct and he told us he had told the agent the rental was 400 pounds a month. We were supposed to pay the rent direct to the agent and he would thereby be receiving 200 pounds a month every month for doing practically nothing!! We have also heard of agents taking as much as 5,000 pounds extra on the price of the lease. Just a little snippet in case it helps. I am not saying all agents are sharks but you do have to be careful.