How to Attract International Buyers: Estate Agents Guide

Most advice on international buyers opens with an enormous number. Global real estate is worth roughly US$393 trillion (Savills, 2024) – true, impressive and useless for planning.

Here is what the official statistics say about the last full year. Foreign buyers purchased 67,100 US homes worth $45.3 billion, down 14% by volume and 19.1% by value (National Association of Realtors, July 2026). In Portugal, purchases by buyers resident abroad fell for a third consecutive year to 5.0% of transactions (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, March 2026). Spain held firm at 13.8% (Colegio de Registradores, 2025).

International buyers are worth pursuing. They are also fewer and far more sensitive to policy than most marketing admits. This page helps you work out whether your agency is set up to reach them. The full guide covers how we fix it.

Pick your markets from data, not from memory

Almost every agency has a mental list of its international markets, built from memorable deals rather than volume. That is how agencies end up marketing to Americans while their actual buyers are Dutch.

Spain publishes the cleanest figures. The league table by nationality is flatter than the reputation suggests: UK 8.6%, Germany 6.7%, Netherlands 5.9%, Morocco 5.3%, France 5.3%, Romania 5.2% of foreign purchases (Colegio de Registradores, 2025).

No single nationality reaches 9%. That is a long tail rather than a top three, which argues for depth in one or two markets over a thin presence in ten.

The definition that changes the answer

Portugal shows why the question has to be asked precisely. Buyers resident abroad were 5.0% of transactions in 2025 and falling. Foreign nationals, including people already living in Portugal, were 27.6% and rising (Instituto Nacional de Estatística, March 2026, corroborated at 28% by Banco de Portugal, May 2026).

Same market, two definitions, twenty-two points apart and completely different marketing. Buy advertising in Brazil because a quarter of Portuguese buyers are foreign and you may be chasing a figure that mostly describes people already living in Lisbon.

Residency rules move demand faster than any campaign

Most marketing guides skip this and it has shifted more international buyer demand in three years than every advertising decision you could make.

Spain has abolished its investor visa – repealed by Ley Orgánica 1/2025, ended 3 April 2025 (Ministerio de Vivienda, April 2025). Portugal closed the property route in October 2023 (Lei n.º 56/2023). Greece and Cyprus remain open at documented thresholds.

So two of the most heavily marketed golden visa destinations in Europe no longer offer one through property. Content still leading on residency in Spain or Portugal is not merely out of date, it tells a buyer you have not been paying attention.

The tax nobody mentions until it is too late

Buyers are not worried about the property. They are worried about the money they cannot see yet and almost no agency content answers it.

Spain taxes non-resident rental income at 19% for EU, Icelandic, Norwegian and Liechtenstein residents. Everyone else pays 24% – and since Brexit, UK residents sit in that band and can no longer deduct expenses at all (Agencia Tributaria).

So a British owner letting a Spanish apartment is taxed on 24% of gross rent – no mortgage interest, no management fees, no maintenance. A Dutch owner of the identical flat pays 19% of the profit. It is the most under-communicated fact in the UK-to-Spain market.

Cyprus has its own version: the 5% reduced VAT rate requires the home to be a main residence for ten years, so a holiday-home buyer pays 19% VAT on a new build (PwC).

UK rules follow the agent, not the property

Selling foreign property does not put a UK business outside UK regulation. Money laundering rules define estate agency work then extend it explicitly to land outside the United Kingdom (Money Laundering Regulations 2017, reg 13), so a UK business marketing Spanish property carries HMRC registration and due diligence obligations.

The consumer protection regime also changed in April 2025. The CMA now enforces directly with penalties up to 10% of worldwide turnover and can act against traders outside the UK who direct marketing at UK consumers (CMA guidance, November 2025).

Five questions to ask about your own setup

Most of these you can answer in an afternoon.

1. Where did your last ten international enquiries actually come from? – Not the memorable ones. All ten.
2. Open your site on a phone, on mobile data, in a country you sell to – How long before something useful appears? Google’s threshold for good is a Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds (Google, Core Web Vitals).
3. Is the site in the language of your top market, with prices in their currency? – Survey evidence puts the share preferring to buy in their own language at 76%, with 40% saying they would not buy from a foreign-language site at all (CSA Research, 2020).
4. Can someone reach you on WhatsApp and who answers at eight in the evening?
5. Does your content answer the money questions? – Purchase costs, ongoing tax, non-resident mortgages, per nationality.

What to expect

We are not going to quote you a percentage uplift.

What we can say is the order the work pays off in. Fix the foundation first, because advertising into a site that cannot take the enquiry is the most expensive mistake available. Then go deep in one or two markets. Then build the research content, the slowest part and the one that keeps working after the advertising stops.

Paid advertising can produce enquiries within days provided the pages already exist. Where they still have to be built and translated, the pages are the timeline and the advertising is the quick part.

Get the full guide

This page helps you find the problem. How to Attract International Buyers covers how we fix it and includes the parts we have not published here.

• The full three-pillar system – foundation, marketing and trust – with what each element is protecting against.
• What the evidence actually says about page speed – including which widely quoted figures do not hold up.
• The honest correction on machine translation – The usual claim is that buyers spot it instantly. The research disagrees and the real reason to translate is stronger.
• The full cost and tax picture – purchase and ongoing, for the markets you sell to.
• A free quarterly index of foreign demand – by province and municipality, with source nationality attached, that turns geographic targeting into an evidenced decision.
• What UK law requires of you – money laundering and consumer protection, when the property is abroad.
• What the regulators actually allow on lending – instead of the LTV figures brokers quote.
• The full residency picture – with thresholds, dates and what each change did to demand.
• Our mobile click study – and what it means for an overseas landing page.
• The complete checklist – and the mistakes that cost enquiries.

Request the guide using the form on this page and we will send it straight over.

Common questions

How long before this produces?

Advertising can produce enquiries within days if the pages already exist. Content and rankings take months. We will not give you a percentage before seeing your site and your data, because that number would be invented.

Sources

Mobile click share: Property Webmasters click study, 1 June to 31 August 2026, 184,732 Google Ads clicks across managed property accounts. Analysis by Matt Atkinson. Full methodology and per-account breakdown in the guide.

Global real estate value: Savills, 2024.

US foreign buyer volume and origin: National Association of Realtors, July 2026.

Spanish foreign purchase share and nationality split: Colegio de Registradores, 2025.

Portuguese non-resident and foreign national purchases: Instituto Nacional de Estatística, March 2026, corroborated by Banco de Portugal, May 2026.

Spanish investor visa repeal: Ministerio de Vivienda, April 2025. Portuguese golden visa change: Lei n.º 56/2023.

Core Web Vitals: Google, Core Web Vitals. Language preference: CSA Research, 2020.

Non-resident tax position: Agencia Tributaria and PwC.

UK agent obligations: Money Laundering Regulations 2017, reg 13 and CMA guidance, November 2025.