Selling homes to foreign buyers: a website in their language
If you sell homes on the Spanish coasts, the islands or in Portugal, a large share of your buyers don't speak your language at home. They start looking months before they visit, and by the time they write to an agent they have already decided whom to trust. Most of that decision happens on your website, and it happens in their language or not at all.
Who your buyers are
The figures from the Colegio de Registradores are clear. In 2025 foreigners bought 43.3% of the homes sold in Alicante province, 32.8% in Málaga, 30% in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and 29.9% in the Balearics, against 13.8% for Spain as a whole. British, German and Dutch buyers lead. In Portugal, foreign nationals bought about one in four homes sold in 2025 (INE).
Many are not tourists either: at the end of 2025, 7.5 million foreign nationals held a valid residence document in Spain.
Language matters to them as much as to any other customer: 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy with information in their own language, and 40% never buy from websites in other languages (CSA Research, 2020).
What buyers look for before they contact you
A foreign buyer is not only choosing a property. They are choosing a country's legal system, a town and a person to trust. Before they write to you, they want answers to questions like these:
- The area. What is the town like in winter? Where are the schools, the hospital, the airport, the supermarket? Is the beach walkable or a drive away?
- The buying process. What happens between an offer and the keys? What is a reservation contract, who is the notary, do I need a tax number?
- The costs. Taxes, notary and registry fees, a lawyer, community fees, annual property taxes. Buyers hate surprises more than high numbers.
- Trust. Who you are, how long you have worked in the area, your registration details, your office address and a real phone number.
An agent whose site answers these questions calmly, in the buyer's language, has already done half the work of the first meeting.
Which languages to offer
Start with your buyers, not with a long list. On most Spanish coasts that means English, German and Dutch alongside Spanish; in Portugal, Portuguese and English at least, then the languages of the buyers you actually meet. Look at your enquiries from the last year and at where your website visitors come from.
Two languages done well beat six done badly. Each language you add means property pages, guides and replies to keep up to date, so add one when you can maintain it.
Property pages and buying guides
Each property deserves its own page in each language, with its own address, so a search in German finds the German page. Good photos carry most of the weight: daylight, tidy rooms, the view, the street, the nearest beach or square. Write the description for someone who has never been there, and keep facts such as size, price and community fees in short lines that are easy to check in every language.
Your listings change every month, but your guides keep working for years. Area guides ("Living in Jávea year-round"), a step-by-step buying guide, a page on costs and taxes, and a page for buyers who are not resident are the pages people search for long before they look at a specific house. They are your main search asset, and they show your knowledge better than any slogan.
Avoid putting guides in PDFs: they read badly on phones and search engines handle them poorly. Use normal pages, with hreflang so search engines know which language each version is in.
Enquiries and anything legal
When someone writes in German, reply in German, or say honestly that you will reply in English and offer a call with someone who speaks their language. A contact form on every property page, with the property name included, saves a round of questions.
Machine translation is a good start for descriptions and guides, but it needs a human read. For anything legal or financial (reservation contracts, tax explanations, conditions of sale) have the translation checked by a professional translator or a lawyer, and check with a lawyer or tax adviser about what your pages may say. A wrong word in a guide is embarrassing; a wrong word in a contract is expensive.
How FolioPress fits
FolioPress is a website builder with translation built in. You write a page once, the AI drafts the other languages, and nothing is published until you approve it. Each language gets its own translated address, hreflang and a language switcher, so your buying guide is found in Dutch as well as in English.
Photo galleries suit property pages, the blog with scheduled posts suits area guides, and a contact form can go on any page. It is hosted in the EU.
FolioPress has no property feeds, portal integration or search filters, so it suits boutique agencies with a curated set of homes rather than large portfolios. Bilingual is €12/month, Multilingual €19/month with all 56 languages, and you get 30 days free.