What we missed during our own purchase is exactly what Casa Connecta does now.
Lotte Schouwenaars and Sander Leenders are the founders of Casa Connecta. We've known the Costa Brava since childhood, have lived in Baix Empordà for most of the year since 2025, and bought, financed, and renovated our own home there. Casa Connecta is built from what we missed along the way.
Lotte spent twelve years running retail and foodservice transformation programmes across the Benelux — from concept to rollout, across networks of hundreds of locations. She knows exactly what happens when no one is watching the whole picture. Sander coordinated property projects from purchase to handover, in the Netherlands and in Spain, for himself and for people he knows. The coordinating, we'd done before. The Spanish purchase we did for the first time ourselves.
From 2022 we searched along the coast, in Calella de Palafrugell and Llafranc. Supply is tight there, and good properties rarely come up. We viewed eight homes. Not one was quite right. At the end of 2024 the right one came onto the market, dated throughout. In the spring of 2025 we bought it.
We knew the region. We spoke the language. And yet it stalled. The NIE application, the number every foreign buyer needs. A mortgage file that had us supplying the same documents again and again: the bank said everything was complete, and a week later it wasn't. Contract clauses that, in the end, we had to sort out ourselves.
None of these obstacles was insurmountable. Together they showed what was missing: one party keeping track of the whole process, exclusively for the buyer. So we built what we wished we'd had. That became Casa Connecta.
"If this was already this complicated for us, with the language, the network, and the local knowledge, what's it like for someone without any of that?"
We've been coming here since childhood. First on holiday, then for longer stretches, and since 2025 for most of the year. When we decided to buy in 2022, we built our network straight away: architects, contractors, agents, and contacts at the ayuntamientos.
We put that network to the test with our own renovation. At the end of 2025 we had that same dated house fully renovated: wiring, plumbing, bathrooms, kitchen, plastering, window frames. The permit came through quickly from the municipality. The schedule ran over a little, but it stayed under control, because someone was keeping an eye on the project as a whole. We know the villages, the trades, and the local rhythms, not from a guidebook, but from daily life here.
Spain is much larger than where we work: Costa del Sol, Mallorca, Marbella. We don't work there, because we don't live there. In Baix Empordà we know which ayuntamiento responds quickly, which architect fits the project, and which contractor suits which kind of work. Renovating from a distance is possible, but without someone on the ground, you miss signals you can't afford to miss.
Document work is different. The Spain Purchase Plan and the Document Check are about documents and steps rather than a site visit, so we deliver those across Spain. Our deepest first-hand market knowledge sits in Baix Empordà and the wider Costa Brava. For renovation, it stays Baix Empordà.
What we deliver is written buyer-side work: a purchase plan with the steps and their order, and an overview of the purchase documents you already have. Not an agent's role, not mortgage advice, not building work.
In practice that means:
Lotte Schouwenaars and Sander Leenders write and check every file themselves. Who leads depends on the case.
We earn only from you.
Banks, contractors, and lawyers don't pay us, and we have no arrangements with parties behind the scenes. That's what working independently means for us: your interest is the only interest we represent.
If the mortgage carries more risk than you've been told, or if a contractor's quote doesn't add up, we'll say so. Even when it's inconvenient.
On financing, the legal position is clear: mortgage advice comes from a Spanish adviser certified for it under Spanish law (Ley 5/2019), and whether the application goes through is the bank's decision. Our work stops at the documents.
Finding a property wasn't even the hard part. Everything around it took far more attention than we'd expected. Above all, Casa Connecta helped us keep the overview.
The requirements Spanish banks place on non-residents, and all the documentation around it, are far from simple. Casa Connecta quickly brought overview and structure, so we knew what had to happen right away and what could wait. That saved us a lot of time and uncertainty.
Most international buyers start with a Spain Purchase Plan. It gives you insight into your situation, the main risks, and the logical next steps, before you spend months searching, bidding, or arranging financing.
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