Our next community spotlight falls on Campbell Ferguson FRICS. Campbell is a chartered building surveyor who has been operating in Spain for many years and has some great insights for those looking to relocate abroad. Let's learn more about him :
Benefitting from keeping an open mind and interest in what’s happening is the joy of the profession
Surveying is an interesting and varied career, can you tell us why you decided to specialise in building surveying and why you chose to practice in Spain (apart from the weather of course!) ?
When I qualified as a Land Economist and ARICS in Glasgow way back in 1973, I did so as a general practise surveyor, which encompassed valuation and building surveying and was the principal differentiation from quantity surveying. Even now when one mentions the profession and RICS, I usually end up explaining that we're appraisers and home inspectors as these days much of the international world is more familiar with the American English terms. So, my experience has been with all property types and varied professional work.
In 1989 I was invited to be MD of a property development company in Spain, seeking sites for roadside services of petrol stations, restaurants and motels. Unfortunately, the invasion of Kuwait and the recession in 1991 put an end to that and I had the hard decision to return to Scotland, as I’d loved travelling all over Spain. In 1998 I became Head of Acquisition for a Service Office company. Starting with one unit in Glasgow, we ended with 14 in prime locations in Edinburgh, Manchester, London, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and my having travelled to other European cities plus Boston and Manhattan.
Another international collapse, this time of the IT boom on which service offices then depended, led to my seeking a new role. I knew people in the South of Spain, so here I came in 2001. After working as an estate agent for just over a year, I decided to go back to the professional niche rather than the boom or bust and moral dilemmas of estate agency. Very slow at the beginning as buyers are put off getting pre-acquisition surveys by agents saying, “nobody does that here”, but gradually other professionals, contacts, SEO on the internet and even, yes, the RICS ‘Find a Surveyor’ have helped bring clients to our door. So, Survey Spain will be 21 years old in September this year, ‘keys of the door’ at last.
Are there any major differences surveying in Spain compared to the UK and how did you go about starting your Spanish career?
My experience is as a foreigner with an international qualification, largely unrecognised by the Bank of Spain and Spanish legal property registrars. Shortly after I arrived, the law was changed so that only valuation companies registered with the Bank of Spain could carry out mortgage or insurance valuations, or have their valuations recognised by Title registrars. Understandable, as prior to that it had been very unregulated. However, it has led to the Bank of Spain’s regulations being very biased to protecting the interests of the lenders and not providing current market value.
There is no public availability of property sale prices as there is in the UK. Thus, comparative valuations must be based on asking prices from Estate agents, whose descriptions can be misleading and inaccurate. One needs to quickly become familiar with the idiosyncrasies of market information and Survey Spain now has a reliable record of average discounts between asking price and actual buying price to enable our valuations to be statistically accurate. It's also a large country, with significant travel required to visit some remoter, but often beautiful locations.
Unfortunately, RICS’s Homebuyer report templates are not appropriate for valuations or building surveys in Spain, so Survey Spain has had to develop its own. Official title description extracts (Nota Simples) and tax descriptions (Catastral) are extremely helpful, but often are not kept up to date, so our measurements and details of accommodation are often ‘news’ to our client’s solicitor who is writing the formal purchase document. A history of deliberately inaccurate descriptions and registered incomplete sale prices in an attempt to evade tax has not helped, though that is much less common now than it was.
Construction, largely with concrete, makes building surveys simpler than traditional brick and timber in UK, but damp is a frustratingly common problem. This is largely through designs being more towards the heat and desiccation of summer than the chill and damp of winter. A more prevalent independence of mind with regard to planning and building regulations led to tens of thousands of largely rural properties being constructed illegally. Realising the enormity of the problem and that they couldn’t all be demolished, administrative arrangements have been developed to allow them to be ‘regularised’, which in most respects is effectively the same as legalised, essentially permitting them to be described in the registered title and connected to mains electricity and water.
What are some of the most significant professional challenges you've faced in your surveying career, and what aspects of the job do you find most exciting?
Fortunately, property law in Spain is similar to that of Scotland, being based on Roman law. But whilst the concepts and formal procedures were familiar, learning the details and conventions in a foreign language was certainly a struggle. Cultural differences still catch me out, where attitudes and actions occur that are just not ‘logical’ to me and often appear to harm the interests of the person putting them forward. But I quickly learnt not to say, “Well, in Scotland ….” and just let things progress anyway and deal with the result.
Every day has its interests as one never knows what the next instruction will be or challenge that will be found, sometimes literally just round the corner. Benefitting from keeping an open mind and interest in what’s happening is the joy of the profession.
Spain and its culture are so beautiful that it's a privilege to be here. I remember just after coming here, sitting having a coffee at a marina, looking round at the tourists on their balconies enjoying the spring warmth and sunshine, and thinking that I was living the life that they were wondering how they could do for more than a two week holiday.
In your experience, how can the surveying profession attract the next generation?
By making it worthwhile. Keeping it varied and interesting and financially rewarding. For the right people it's a joy, and I’m so fortunate that it suited me from the start. I’d always been interested in the physical world and having the ability to wander about in it and think and make a difference for clients is what’s my satisfaction. It’ll work for some and not for others, square pegs in round holes, so we must bring the details of the work forward. I’ve been fortunate in being my own boss for most of my career so far and that ability will be attractive for some. Seeing honesty and integrity respected and rewarded.
How can myRICS Community help surveyors?
Exchanging ideas and experiences and being mentors for each other. And prodding RICS to do better for its members and not act purely as a consumer organisation.
And finally, where do you see the future of surveying?
AI and Robots are the future, or even here now. Many routine tasks will be lost to them, and good riddance! However, the physical environment will always be here, with erosion and rust and damp and subsidence, etc, etc. and it will take a very skilful robot to investigate buildings for these. Surveyors/Inspectors will always be needed to record the current condition and guide the robot to where it must carry out its repair work.
Valuation/Appraisal I see as having a less secure future, as computers and AI become more sophisticated and learn. If computers can play chess well above the ability of all but a few human Grand Masters, then it won’t be beyond their ability to gather all the relevant information together and come up with a valuation. Online valuations are doing that already, very imperfectly in most circumstances now, but soon they will become more accurate as they learn from mistakes and have more information available.
For me aged 76, I’m looking for the right someone to buy my business so that it can go onward and upward, and they and I can also enjoy the life I have lived.
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