English-speaking builders · Valencia
English-speaking builders in Valencia — a Spanish company, not a middleman
A building company based in La Eliana, with more than 35 years behind us and our own tradespeople on site. Your quote, your town hall paperwork and every decision about your house, handled in English by one person you can put a face to, from the first site visit right through to handover.
Get a free quoteCall · +34 632 224 55501 The question everyone asks
Can anyone recommend a reliable builder in Valencia?
It goes round the English-speaking groups in La Eliana, La Cañada, Bétera and Rocafort every few weeks. Someone needs a bathroom doing, or a pool that has been losing water since March, and nobody wants a bad story of their own.
The advice that comes back from people who have already been through it is sound. Hire a proper Spanish building company — one that has worked in the area for years, employs its own trades and puts its price in writing — and sort the language out separately. Picking a builder only because they answer the phone in your own language is how most of those stories begin.
This page is here to close that gap. Batecs is that Spanish company: more than 35 years of reformas — the everyday Spanish word for a renovation — across Valencia, l’Horta and the Camp de Túria, with our own team on site. And the language never has to be sorted out separately, because we run the job in English ourselves.
02 Who you are actually hiring
Why it matters that we build the work ourselves
Some people in Valencia will take on your renovation in excellent English and then pay somebody else to carry out every part of it. That is a legitimate way to trade. It is not ours, and the difference shows up in your price and in who answers when something needs putting right.
One party coordinates, another builds
- The person you speak to does not employ the people working in your house.
- Every trade is bought in, and each one carries a margin you never see.
- Your changes travel through a third party before they reach the site.
- When something has to be put right, responsibility moves between companies.
- The relationship ends the day the last invoice is paid.
The company you hire is the company on site
- The core of the work is carried out by our own in-house team.
- One site manager runs your job and answers for it.
- You deal with us in English; we deal with the trades in Spanish.
- We answer for the work carried out and for the materials, under current Spanish law.
- We are ten minutes from most of the houses we renovate, and still here afterwards.
The base is in La Eliana, the vans carry our name and the trades on your job are ours. There is more about how the company is put together on about us.
03 Working in English
Your renovation, run in English from the first visit to the last day
We are a Spanish company and that is deliberate. On top of it sits a way of running a job so that nothing about your own house reaches you second-hand, three days late, or roughly translated by a neighbour who was trying to help.
- One English-speaking point of contact. The same person comes to the site visit, writes your quote and rings you when there is a decision to make. Not a switchboard, not a different name every week.
- A quote you can actually read. It arrives itemised trade by trade, and we go through it with you line by line before anything is signed. If a line does not make sense, sorting that out is our job.
- The town hall paperwork prepared and submitted by us. A building licence (licencia de obra) when the work is structural, a responsible declaration (declaración responsable) when it is not. We assemble the file, hand it in, and tell you what it says and what comes next.
- Decisions and changes put in writing. Anything that moves the scope, the price or the finish is written down and sent to you first. Nothing about your house gets agreed verbally, on site, in a language you do not follow.
The official documents themselves stay in Spanish, of course: a licence issued by a town hall here is written in Spanish and always will be. Our job is to make sure you know what it says before your name goes anywhere near it.
04 The money
What a fixed-price quote actually means here
This is where most of the worry sits, and fairly. Almost everyone who calls has heard about a job that started at one number and finished at another.
In Britain you are used to an opening figure: a number understood to move once the work begins. A Spanish presupuesto, done properly, is not that. It is a closed price, agreed in writing before anyone lifts a tool, and it is the figure you pay. Ours is written after we have been to the house — never before, because nobody can price a building from a photograph. What comes back to you sets the work out trade by trade:
- Demolition and clearing, with what goes and what stays spelled out.
- Each installation on its own line: plumbing, electrics, heating and cooling, drainage.
- Wall and floor finishes with the material named and the quantity behind it.
- Kitchen, bathrooms and joinery priced separately, so you can see what a change would cost.
- Outdoor work — terrace, garden, concrete pool — kept apart from the figure for the house.
- Waste removal, protecting the property, the licence paperwork and the final clean.
Once signed, that price does not move: not because materials went up, and not because the job took longer than we had planned for.
Two things can change it, and only two. You ask for something that was never in the scope — a wall moved, a better tap, a second bathroom while we are in there. Or we open something up and find what was invisible on the day of the visit: a rotten beam, a drain that goes nowhere, damp behind a cupboard. The rule for both is in the quote: the extra work is priced, sent to you in writing, and started only once you have said yes.
If a builder will not itemise, that is worth a pause. A single number with no breakdown cannot be checked, compared or argued with later. The whole sequence, from first visit to handover, is on how we work.
Not sure where to start? Start with a conversation.
Tell us what the house is, what is wrong with it and what you would like instead. We will come and look, and you will have a written quote in English within 24–48 hours. The visit costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Ask for a quote05 Permissions
Who talks to the town hall — and in what language
Every renovation in Spain needs the town hall’s agreement in one form or another, and which form depends on the work. Move a wall, touch the structure, change the footprint or build a pool, and you are into the full licence route. Replace a bathroom, redo a kitchen, change windows like for like, and it is usually the lighter one: a declaration you file, with the technical documents attached.
We put that file together and we submit it. The drawings, the technical description, the forms, the follow-up when the town hall asks for one more document — that is our work, not yours. Timescales vary from one town hall to the next and we will not pretend otherwise. What we will do is tell you where your file has got to, whenever you ask.
When the building work is finished the paperwork closes properly too: the job is signed off and the completion documents join the rest of the file. Your house ends up correct on paper as well as on the ground, which matters far more than it seems at the time — usually on the day you sell.
06 Due diligence
How to check that a building company is what it says it is
None of this is aimed at anybody in particular, and all of it applies to us. Put these to any building company before you sign. If a company minds being asked, you have your answer already.
Ask for the company details
A serious quote carries the full legal name of the company, its tax identification number and an address you can find on a map. A mobile number and a first name is not a company.
Ask for it in writing
Priced, dated and itemised, on paper or as a PDF you can keep. If the only version of the price is something said in your kitchen, there is nothing to hold anyone to.
Ask who is actually coming
Directly employed people, or trades brought in for the week? Neither answer is wrong in itself. Not getting a straight answer is.
Ask how it will be invoiced
By the same company that quoted for it, in that company’s name, for the full amount. Anything else creates a problem for you rather than for them.
Ask to see finished work
Not photographs from a stock library. A street, an address, something nearby you can drive past. Any company that has worked in your area for years will have plenty.
Ask who you will talk to
One named person for the whole job, or whoever happens to answer? Better to know before the first hammer goes in.
Ask us all of them. We would rather answer now than have you wondering in month three. The process itself — visit, quote, licence, build, snagging list, handover — is on how we work.
07 If you are not here
Renovating while you are somewhere else
Most of the houses we work on belong to people who live here all year; some to owners who are only here for part of it. The building work is identical. What changes is how it gets reported back to you.
Photographs as it happens
What is finished, what starts next, and whatever turned up behind a wall that you ought to know about. Enough to follow the job from a laptop.
Decisions by video call
Tiles, taps, worktops, the wall you are not sure about. We walk the room with a phone so you are looking at the space instead of a paragraph describing it.
Somebody on site
Somebody has to unlock the house, sign for materials and let each trade in. That somebody is us, and it is the same face for the whole job.
If you would rather hand the whole thing over — design, licence, building work, furniture, keys — that is what our turnkey renovations are built around.
08 What we build
The work we take on
Four things make up most of what we do, all run the same way: one team, one price agreed up front, one person who answers the phone.
Villa renovations
The seventies or eighties villa with tired wiring, single glazing and a pool that has seen better days. Inside, outside and pool in the right order.
Concrete pools
Shell, filtration, coping and the ground around it built as one job, so the terrace does not have to come up twice.
Full home renovations
The whole house at once: layout, installations, kitchen, bathrooms and finishes, handed back finished rather than nearly finished.
Turnkey renovations
For owners who cannot be here to run it. One contract, one price, the keys at the end and the paperwork closed.
Finished work
Three jobs you can look at in detail
Each one opens with what the house was and what we changed.
Where we work
The towns we work in
Our base is in La Eliana, which puts the villa belt around the international schools about ten minutes from the yard. We also work across Valencia city and l’Horta.
Where most of our English-speaking clients live
Also close by
Straight answers
Questions we get asked before anyone commits
Can anyone recommend a good, reliable builder in the Valencia area?
Ask three things of whoever you are given a name for: how long they have worked in your town, whether the people on site are theirs, and whether the price comes itemised and in writing. A company that answers all three without hesitating is worth a site visit. For our part: more than 35 years around Valencia and the Camp de Túria, our own in-house team, and a fixed written quote after we have seen the house.
Should I use an English-speaking builder or a Spanish one?
It is not a choice you should have to make, and treating it as one is what causes the trouble. What you want is a properly run Spanish building company, because that is who understands the materials, the trades, the climate and the town hall. What you also want is to follow what is happening in your own house. Batecs is the first, and runs the job in English so that you get the second.
How do I know the builder is legal?
Ask for the quote on company paper, with the full company name, the tax identification number and a real address on it. Ask that the work be invoiced by that same company, in its name, for the full amount. Ask who employs the people who will be in your house, and ask to see work you can go and look at. None of that is rude: it is what any long-established company expects.
How do I avoid the “expat trap”?
The trap is choosing a builder for one reason only, which is that they speak your language. That tells you nothing about whether they can build. Judge the company first on the ordinary things — how long it has traded, whether it employs its own trades, whether it prices in writing, whether you can go and see finished work — and treat the language for what it is: what makes the process comprehensible, not what you are buying.
Should I worry if a builder asks to be paid in cash?
We can only speak for how we work. Every job we take on is quoted in writing beforehand and invoiced by the company afterwards, in the company’s name, for the full amount. That is the whole of our answer, and it is what we would suggest you expect from anyone.
Why do some builders stop replying?
Usually because the person you were talking to was also the person on the tools, the person pricing the next job and the person chasing materials, and something had to give. We keep those roles apart: your job has one site manager running it and one person whose job is to answer you. If you have not heard from us, ring the office and somebody will know where it stands.
In short
If you are looking for English-speaking builders in Valencia, what you actually want is a Spanish building company that runs its jobs in English. Batecs has been working across Valencia, l’Horta and the Camp de Túria for more than 35 years, with our own in-house team, one site manager per job and a fixed written quote agreed before anyone starts.
There are no figures on this page, deliberately: a price that means anything comes after somebody has walked round your house. The site visit is free, the quote is itemised, and it reaches you within 24–48 hours.
Let us come and look
Tell us about your house, in English
Send us the town, roughly what the house is and what is bothering you. We will arrange a visit, and you will have an itemised written quote within 24–48 hours. No obligation.
+34 632 224 555+34 962 742 447info@batecs.es
Get my free quoteBatecs also builds new homes from the ground up and takes on kitchens, bathrooms, partial renovations and interior design. To see how a job runs from the first visit to handover, read how we work, or get in touch — we are in La Eliana, ten minutes from La Cañada, Godella and San Antonio de Benagéber.