Financing a holiday home in Spain or Portugal: your estate agent earns on the side — and you pay the bill

One bank versus thirty

The broker-arranged route is a single bank contact — the bank the agent has a referral arrangement with, not necessarily the bank with the best terms for your particular case.

An independent mortgage broker such as perini.es compares across more than 30 banks in Spain, Portugal and Germany. Depending on the case — type of income, type of property, region — different institutions come into play, and only a comparison shows which one is cheapest for you. Which Spanish banks lend to non-residents at all is set out in our Spanish banks compared.

The commission missing from the mandatory sheet

In any regular mortgage intermediation the bank has to hand you an ESIS — the European Standardised Information Sheet, which among other things discloses costs and remuneration. But your agent is not a licensed credit intermediary. He only passes on a contact. So his commission does not appear in the ESIS — at no point in the process are you officially told that, or how much, he earns on your financing.

That also explains why no agent will, of his own accord, point you to an independent, licensed broker. With a registered intermediary such as perini.es (§ 34i German Trade Regulation), disclosing one's own remuneration is mandatory. Sending you there would indirectly reveal that a commission exists at all — and how large it is. His silence is not chance; it is the logical consequence of his own business model.

A 1% success fee — and often deductible

At perini.es a fee of 1% of the loan amount falls due on success — €4,500 in the Portugal example, €2,400 in the Spanish one. For let properties this fee is deductible as an income-related expense: as a rule it first reduces the Spanish or Portuguese tax on the rental income (under the double-taxation treaties the right to tax usually sits there), and it also has a minor effect on the German tax burden through the progression proviso.

For comparison: broker fees in Spain run as high as 5% of the loan amount, often with minimum fees of several thousand euros. Our 1% sits at the low end of that market — payable only on success, with no IVA and no upfront cost. And unlike a commission-funded broker, we earn nothing from the bank and work for the client alone — which is also why we can include banks that pay no broker commission at all.

In practice this covers most cases — holiday properties are almost always let at least part of the time, and pure owner-use with no letting at all is the exception. The condition is a genuine intention to let; even part-time letting is generally enough, while pure owner-use rules the tax benefit out. You should clarify the exact requirements with your tax adviser before you fix the letting status in your tax return.

Even without this additional tax benefit, the gross advantage in both examples is already clear: €67,270 in the Portugal case, €5,782 to €14,570 in the Spanish case — in each case less our own fee.

What an independent comparison changes

An independent mortgage broker such as perini.es works without this referral logic — comparing across several banks is the actual service, not a by-product of the agent relationship. As a rule that means better rates, and less often an arrangement fee that would eat the difference back up. The difference does not come from a „better" bank, but from the fact that a comparison actually happens before a decision is made. How the route via a Spanish bank differs from the route via an independent broker is shown in Spanish or German bank.

Practical advice: before you sign the preliminary contract, explicitly ask for a second and third financing offer — even under time pressure. The comparison costs you nothing but a few days, which in most cases you can take if you ask early enough. What a Spanish bank requires of non-residents is set out in our guide to the non-resident mortgage in Spain.

Commission and interest figures come from the advisory practice of perini.es (as of 08/2026) and describe customary market magnitudes, not legally fixed rates; they vary by bank, property, region and creditworthiness. The two worked examples are anonymised cases from advisory practice (real annuity calculation over the full term, plus a 1% arrangement fee on the loan) and are not an offer of particular terms. Personal professional assessment, not legal, tax or investment advice. Customary broker fees in Spain (up to 5% of the loan amount) are based on publicly available market information from Spanish brokers (as of 08/2026). Sources: own Perini advisory practice · § 34i German Trade Regulation · ESIS/European Standardised Information Sheet (Directive 2014/17/EU).