All Forum Posts by: Erwin Groenendijk

Hi @Kelly Kolker, for a perspective from out of Spain I can help out. If you are a Spanish citizen you can deduct all costs made (depreciation, mortgage/interest costs/improvements on the apartment) of your taxable profit, plus a 60% discount on what this amount will be at the end. As a European citizen, you can deduct all the same things as mentioned before, however, the 60% discount does not apply. As a non-European citizen, a person will not be able to deduct these costs of the taxable income. So, if you are planning to invest in these countries, it could benefit you living in Europe for that reason. 

Not sure how it would work out though, as being an American citizen they will always tax you from out of the US correct?

@Hayley Smith, we were thinking of organizing the physical meet ups again from September and for the time being organizing the virtual ones. The topic always differ, but as we are active in the coliving space in Barcelona/Valencia, we tend to talk regularly about the topic. Will send you a PM message with our meet up group to join so you will see what is coming.

Could you explain your coliving plan a bit further? 

Good to see the reactions. @Gustavo Jara, what do you think of joining our next (not sure when that will be with the current situation) physical meet up event in Barcelona? @Javier De la Rosa is there from time to time as well, and would be a good opportunity to have a talk in person. 

Do you also own real estate yourself/or are you doing real estate projects?

For the people closer to Valencia, we can recommend getting in contact with @Celia Fernández.

How active are the members in Spain? Great idea beginning this forum post @Ricardo Naya, let's now connect make use of it and connect further. 

Who is doing projects in Spain, who is the expert in flips or doing rentals, who is active in the commercial space, who is a great contractor, agent, or architect? 

We are active in and around Barcelona & Valencia (flips of residential and commercial properties + coliving rentals), and the contacts we have been making here on Biggerpockets have been incredibly important - actually, our company is created after first meeting here on the BP forums.

So that is why we are searching for more contacts. 

Hi @Ricardo Naya, we are coming together a lot in the Barcelona area. Our meetup group has 800 investors and are discussing/meeting frequently regarding real estate topics. Since some time we are also having our Telegram group, discussing the topics on a daily basis. 

If you like you can always join on of our events when you are around or join our groups.

For the meantime I will send you a PM with my number to add me to yours. Always good to be connecting to other people with new ideas

@Paolo De Leon, bulletproof lease - could be, but it will take a lot of negotiation power to convince your tenants. All the leases are more or less the same in Spain, so doing something different from the 'normal' will probably get some resistance. 

Property management company - we manage our properties ourselves and are managing properties for other people too.

Lawyer - yes, we could give you our lawyer contacts that we use normally.

Send me a PM and I will share it with you.

Exactly.

Just to add: regarding receiving 85% discount as a patrimonial on your company tax, this can already be (like you said @Celia Fernández) from 8 properties. This is interesting, because you are not seen as a gran tenedor if you don't own more than 10 properties. 

@Celia Fernández @Paolo De Leon, this is true. As to for what I know this only applies to companies, or family offices (patrimonios) that are adding bit by bit more properties in their portfolio.

It indeed can give you a huge tax break, however, talking with somebody some weeks ago that just got 7 properties buying one of our apartments in Valencia, he was also getting worried - with COVID the government (not sure if that was only in Cataluña or for the whole of Spain) is lowering the conditions the # of properties you need to own to be seen as a 'gran tenedor'. This was 30 in the past, brought down to 15 some time ago, and with COVID brought down to 10 if I am not mistaking. 

Now, this looks good at first but have in mind that with being a gran tenedor the Spanish government decided that their tenants should be allowed to only be paying 50% of the rents and having 2 options - 1 being that the tenants don't have to pay back this other 50% at all, or 2 that they pay it back in an instalment plan (or 3 hoping that your tenants will not say anything of course). 

You probably noticed that the government created quite a strong picture among all inhabitants that everybody should be almost 'in their right' of not paying rent when they had a difficult situation. A lot of people felt encouraged by these messages and a lot also made use of this (when it wasn't necessary) as a discussion point to the landlords for not paying rent or having the right the get a discount (otherwise you are not a good landlord giving discounts like all the others). Some stories of people even stopped paying completely, because they knew that nobody could kick them out during COVID. Also a lot of tenants knew to find their way in the registers to find out if their landlords were a gran tenedor or not, as (to my surprise) this can be found publicly and easily searching for it.

So, yes, huge advantages and also things to have in mind. 

Regards to both!

@Daniel Alvarez, can help you with mortgage brokers or any other contacts from out of our multiple projects we have done, but have to agree that in Spain you can not avoid the traditional bureaucratic system in place. My main search is constantly talking with people/organisations to see if creative financing in any way is possible, but most of the time being disappointed that it is not the case while in other countries like the US or the UK it is the most common thing to do. This is not making us stop though, and getting bit by bit to where we want to be.

However, the upside of this is that there are way more opportunities in Spain as in the US because here there is no overall investing mentality or the widely accepted possibilities. Making your way through good contacts (within banks), or rather avoiding them if you have cash and are willing to let it stuck in some deals, there is good potential.

@Juan Pardo, sending you a message in private. Would be great to meet up and share experiences. We have been investing in multiple projects in and around Barcelona for some years and would be interesting to hear your view.