Build from scratch and you decide everything: the style of the house, the layout, how well it fits the way you really live, and the specification, room by room, based on how you will use the place. In effect, it is a suit made to measure rather than one off the peg. There is a financial argument as well. Buying the plot and commissioning the house yourself makes you what Spain calls an autopromotor<\/em> \u2014 a self-build client, and an entirely ordinary figure here. It strips out the margin a professional developer would add to the same finished house. Go a step further, cut out the main contractor and hire the trades directly, and you save that margin too. But then you need a project manager to do the coordination the contractor was doing for you. That job does not disappear; it changes hands.<\/p>\n The case for buying an old house and refurbishing it.<\/strong><\/p>\n Three reasons, to my mind. The first is location. If the address matters more to you than anything else, and there are no empty plots where you want to live \u2014 central M\u00e1laga, for instance \u2014 then refurbishing an old house is not the better option, it is the only one. The second is the building itself. If you are after something with history, you only get it by refurbishing. Old brickwork, timber coffered ceilings, rubble stone masonry, original encaustic cement floor tiles (suelos hidr\u00e1ulicos<\/em>): refurbishment lets you set new against old and produce rooms you could never get in a new build. The third is money. Through the crisis \u2014 and still now, though less and less \u2014 houses have come up at prices you could never match by adding plot plus new build. Second-hand prices are more elastic than new build: an inherited house, costs already sunk years ago, a seller who wants out. During those years I was the architect on deals where I could not believe the figures when I heard them. In some cases the property sold for less than the same building would cost to construct today, before you even count the land \u2014 sale prices of around \u20ac600\/m\u00b2. When the numbers look like that, buying something old and refurbishing it clearly wins, because purchase plus refurbishment lands well below plot plus new build.<\/p>\n The drawbacks of building from scratch.<\/strong><\/p>\n The main drawback is uncertainty, and this is where buyers tend to get caught out. People worry about problems with planning permission (licencia de obras<\/em>); about discovering they cannot build what they thought they could, or what they were told they could; about the build cost creeping up; about delays on site; and about trouble at the end getting the new-build paperwork and the utility connections. That last one is worth spelling out for anyone used to the British system. In Spain the town hall grants the works licence at the start, and at the end you need the new-build declaration (declaraci\u00f3n de obra nueva<\/em>) and the first-occupation licence (licencia de primera ocupaci\u00f3n<\/em>) before water and electricity go into your name. Taking the build on yourself does add a layer of risk. That is precisely why it costs less than buying something finished. Well advised, you should not run into problems, and if you do, they get solved. That is our job.<\/p>\n
![\"Buy](\"https:\/\/www.klicarquitectos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Comparativa.jpg\")
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