With plenty of great offers and discounted properties on offer in the Spanish property market, buyers may need to be quick to snap up the very best deals. One of the best ways to be prepared and beat your competitors to the best Spanish bargains is to get yourself assessed and qualified for a Spanish mortgage before you begin your search and your negotiations.

There are some good, reputable Spanish mortgage brokers out there, and once they have been supplied with details of your income, expenditure and liabilities, they will be able to give you an idea of the level of funding that you are likely to receive, together with details of the mortgage products that may be available to you.

In light of recent global financial conditions, the majority of banks in Spain are prepared to lend up to 70% of a property´s purchase price, as long as an applicant´s paperwork and credit profile stack up. There are also a handful of banks that may extend their lending facility to 80% of the purchase price, but normally only when a property presents a lower risk for a bank – ie one that receives a high valuation in comparison with its purchase price.

So it looks like the days of 100% finance are behind us. With interest rates now at historically low levels and most of the lenders likely to pass on the majority of these rate cuts to borrowers, those clients likely to reap the rewards in the current Spanish property market are those that can quickly identify well-located quality product at a great price, and are then able to pay a 20% - 30% deposit in cash.

Banks haven´t stopped lending. Far from it. They are merely exercising prudence, something that they perhaps should have been doing some time ago.