How to Buy Property in Spain as a Non-Resident (2026 Costa Blanca Guide)

So, can you actually buy property in Spain if you are not a resident?

Yes. You can. There is no rule that stops a foreigner from buying a house in Spain. It does not matter if you are from the UK, from Germany, from the Netherlands, from the US, from pretty much anywhere.

My name is Daniel Bertomeu and I work alongside my father Juan Bertomeu, a lawyer with offices in Moraira and Dénia, here on the Costa Blanca, with over 30 years of experience. We deal almost only with international clients. We handle property purchases for foreign buyers basically every week.

And I want to make one thing clear from the start. We are not an estate agency. We are independent lawyers and tax advisors. My father Juan is the lawyer of the family, ICALI number 4643, and he has been doing this since 1991. Keep that difference in mind, because I will come back to it, and it is worth more to you than anything else on this page.

Now, a few things changed in 2025 and 2026 that you need to know before you do anything. Let me put the big one upfront. Buying a property in Spain no longer gives you the right to live in Spain. The Golden Visa, the one where you bought a property worth 500,000 euros or more and got residency with it, that ended on the 3rd of April 2025. It is gone. You can still buy whatever property you want as a non-resident, but if your plan was buy a house and get residency, that route is closed now.

The second big thing, if you are buying on the Costa Blanca specifically, is good news. From the 1st of June 2026 the property transfer tax in the Comunidad Valenciana drops from 10 percent to 9 percent on resale homes. On a 500,000 euro property that is 5,000 euros you save compared to May 2026. There is also a one million euro line that catches people, and I will explain both further down, because the way that line works surprises almost everybody.

So buying is legal. Living here is a separate question. If you do want to move, you go through a visa. The Non-Lucrative Visa if you have passive income, or the Digital Nomad Visa if you work remotely. That is a whole separate topic. Let me focus on the buying.

EU, non-EU, British, American: does your passport change anything?

For the actual buying, almost nothing changes. An EU buyer and a non-EU buyer both buy the same way. Same notary, same Land Registry, same taxes on the purchase itself.

Where your passport does matter is later. When you own the property and you pay your annual taxes, and when you eventually sell. There the EU and non-EU split shows up, and it is not small. If you are British and you are planning to let the place out when you are not in it, that gap is probably the biggest number on this whole page for you. I will cover it in the owning section. For now just know the purchase process is the same for everyone.

Two quick notes. If you are British, Brexit did not stop you buying. You buy as any other non-EU national now, that is the only change. And if you are American, there is one specific thing. In some coastal or border zones you may need a military authorization to buy land. It is a leftover rule and your lawyer checks it for you before you commit to anything. It is rarely a problem, but you want that check done before you pay any deposit.

Is Spain really going to charge non-EU buyers a 100 percent tax?

You have probably seen the headline. Spain wants to tax non-EU buyers up to 100 percent of the property price. It scared half of my British and American clients in 2025, so let me tell you where this actually stands.

In May 2025 the government sent a proposal to parliament for a new charge on property purchases by non-EU buyers who do not live in Spain. A proposal. As I write this, in July 2026, it is not law. Nothing has been approved, and there is nothing in the BOE, the official state gazette. You buy today under the same rules as everyone else. And in the proposal as written, new build homes were left out.

Will it ever pass? Honestly, I do not know, and I am not going to pretend I do. It has a complicated road in parliament. But if it worries you, that is a reason to plan properly, not a reason to panic. It is definitely not a reason to rush a purchase because somebody told you the door is closing this year. Nobody is closing any door this year. If it ever moves, we will update this guide.

The three things you sort out before you start

Before you go house hunting seriously, there are three things to get in place. The NIE, a Spanish bank account, and if you are buying from abroad, a power of attorney. Let me go one by one.

The NIE, Número de Identidad de Extranjero, is your foreigner ID number in Spain. It is mandatory. It goes on the deed, on the tax forms, on everything. No NIE, no purchase. You can get it at a Spanish consulate in your country, or at a police station here in Spain. Or, and this is what most of our clients do, we get it for you with a power of attorney so you do not have to fly over and queue.

Do not leave this to the last week. Appointments can be slow, and it is the kind of thing that holds up a whole purchase while everybody waits for one piece of paper with your name on it.

A Spanish bank account is not strictly required by law, but in practice you need one. Utilities, community fees, the IBI local tax, they all get paid by direct debit from a Spanish account. And the notary often wants the funds to move cleanly. Most banks now let you open a non-resident account with a video ID from home. They will ask for proof of where your money comes from. That is the anti money laundering rules, everybody goes through it, it is normal.

Power of attorney, poder notarial. This is the one that lets you buy without setting foot in Spain. You sign a special power of attorney for property in front of a notary, often you can do it in your own country with an apostille, and that lets your lawyer get your NIE, open the bank account and sign the deed for you. It costs roughly 50 to 150 euros for the document itself.

We have bought properties for clients who never came to Spain until they collected the keys. So if you cannot take four days off work every time something needs a signature, this is the answer. Do not let distance stop you.

The purchase, step by step

The order is this. Search, reservation, arras, due diligence, notary, Land Registry, taxes. Let me walk you through it.

One, you find the property and agree a price. Two, you sign a reservation, usually a small amount, a few thousand euros, that takes the property off the market for a short time. Three, the contrato de arras. This is the deposit contract, usually around 10 percent of the price, and you need to understand it before you sign because it is binding.

If it is arras penitenciales and you the buyer walk away, you lose that deposit. If the seller walks away, the seller has to give you back double. So on a 350,000 euro house, that is 35,000 euros of your money riding on a document somebody handed you across a desk. Do not sign it just because the agent puts it in front of you and says everyone signs this. Get your lawyer to read it first.

And if you are buying with a mortgage, read that paragraph again. The arras contract is where it gets decided what happens if your mortgage is refused. Whether you get your deposit back, or whether a bank saying no counts as you walking away. That is not a detail. On that house, that is 35,000 euros.

Four, due diligence. This is where the lawyer actually earns their fee. I will give it its own section, because people skip it and then they regret it. Five, the notary. You and the seller, or your lawyer holding your power of attorney, sign the escritura pública, the public deed, in front of a notary. The money moves, and you get the keys. Six, the deed goes to the Registro de la Propiedad, the Land Registry, so the property is now legally in your name for everyone to see. Seven, the purchase taxes get filed and paid within the deadline.

So those are the steps. Off-plan is a bit different. That is a brand new property you buy from a developer before it is finished. The money goes in stages, and you want bank guarantees on every stage payment. So that if the developer goes under, your money is protected. If that is your situation, talk to a lawyer before you pay the first euro.

Why you need your own independent lawyer, not the seller's

So I want you to really hear this part. The estate agent works for the seller. The notary is neutral, the notary checks the deed is correct, but the notary does not protect your interests. The seller's lawyer protects the seller. You need your own independent lawyer, somebody whose only job is to look after you.

What does that lawyer actually check? First, the nota simple from the Land Registry. That tells us who really owns the property, and whether there is a mortgage, an embargo or any charge sitting on it. Second, we cross-check the Catastro against the Registry, because sometimes what is on paper and what is built do not match.

Third, planning and licences. Is that pool legal? Is that extension legal? Was the whole house even built with a licence? On the Costa Blanca we see houses where part of the build was never legalised, and you do not want to find that out after you own it. You want to find it out while you can still walk away.

And there is a rule in Spain that surprises a lot of foreign buyers, so read this one twice. The debt follows the property, not the person. Unpaid IBI, unpaid community fees, certain utility debts, they attach to the house. So if the previous owner left a pile of unpaid community fees, that becomes your problem the day you sign. Not his problem. Yours.

Unless your lawyer caught it and made the seller clear it first. That is exactly why the nota simple, and a community fee certificate before signing, are not optional. This is a check that has to happen before the money moves, because afterwards the debt is already yours and the man who ran it up is gone.

We have had clients come to us after signing on their own, to fix problems that would have been a five minute check beforehand. This is where an independent lawyer pays for itself. If you want to see how we handle the whole purchase, it is laid out on our conveyancing page.

The taxes when you buy, and the Costa Blanca 9 percent angle

Okay, taxes. This depends on whether you are buying a resale property or a brand new one.

If it is a resale, a second-hand home, you pay ITP, the property transfer tax. This is regional, so it changes depending on where in Spain you buy. Here in the Comunidad Valenciana, which is Alicante, Valencia and Castellón, it drops from 10 percent to 9 percent from the 1st of June 2026. That is the change, and that is the good news.

Now the part people get wrong. The 9 percent only applies up to 1,000,000 euros. The moment the property crosses that line, the whole purchase is taxed at 11 percent. Not just the part above the million. The whole thing.

And let me be precise here, because it matters for how you plan. That 11 percent is not new. It has been sitting there since the 1st of January 2023. What changed on the 1st of June 2026 is only the general rate coming down from 10 to 9. So nobody set a trap for you this year. The line was already there. It is just that the drop underneath it makes the step look sharper than it used to.

Run the numbers and you will see why it matters. A property at 950,000 euros pays 85,500 in ITP. A property at 1,050,000 euros pays 115,500. So the house that costs 100,000 more actually costs you 130,000 more once the tax lands. Those two properties are in completely different worlds, and they look identical in the window of the estate agency.

And just to be clear on timing, it is the date you sign the deed at the notary that decides the rate. Sign before the 1st of June 2026 and you are still on the old 10 percent. Sign on or after, and you get the 9.

Who benefits most from this cut? In our experience, apartments along the coast, and detached villas that are not in the very prime spots. In places like Moraira, Jávea or Altea it is very common to see properties worth a million or more. Those do not benefit at all. There are also reduced ITP rates in this region for first homes, young buyers, large families and so on, but they are built for Spanish tax residents. As a non-resident, budget the full 9 percent, or 11 if you go over a million.

If you are buying a brand new property from a developer, obra nueva, you do not pay ITP at all. You pay 10 percent VAT, IVA, plus stamp duty, AJD, which in the Comunidad Valenciana drops from 1.5 to 1.4 percent from the 1st of June 2026.

Now one warning I give every client. Do not try to declare a price lower than what you really paid. The tax office uses a benchmark called the valor de referencia del Catastro, and since 2022 they charge the tax on whichever is higher, your declared price or that reference value. So if you buy for 280,000 but the reference value says 320,000, you pay tax on 320,000.

You can check that value for free at the Catastro website before you buy. And you should, because if the reference value is higher you will pay tax on a number you never agreed to, and you will find out when the bill arrives. It takes five minutes.

One more thing, because this guide is written from the Costa Blanca. ITP is regional. If you are also looking at other parts of Spain, the percentage there is simply a different number, and rates move. So whatever region you end up in, check the current number before you build a budget on top of it.

A real Costa Blanca example, euro by euro

Let me show you what that means with real numbers. Say you buy a resale apartment in Moraira for 350,000 euros, after the 1st of June 2026.

ITP at 9 percent, that is 31,500 euros. Notary, roughly 0.2 to 0.5 percent, call it around 1,000 to 1,500. Land Registry, roughly 0.1 to 0.25 percent, call it 500 to 800. Independent lawyer, around 1 percent plus VAT, so very roughly 4,000 with the VAT on top.

Add it up. On top of your 350,000 you are looking at somewhere around 37,000 to 38,000 euros of costs. That is a bit under 11 percent of the price. And here is the part that changes how you plan: that money does not come out of a mortgage. It comes out of your account, in cash, around the time you sign.

That is why the rule of thumb everyone uses is budget about 10 to 15 percent on top of the price. For a normal resale on the Costa Blanca it usually lands closer to 10 to 12. New build sits a bit higher, with the 10 percent VAT.

If you want to play with your own numbers before you even talk to anyone, we built a little property cost estimator at /tools/property-cost-estimator. Put in your price and it gives you a realistic total. It will not replace a proper quote from us, but it stops the nasty surprise. And honestly, knowing the real number from day one is the most important part, because that number is what decides whether the house you are looking at is the house you can actually buy.

Mortgages and moving the money

If you need a mortgage as a non-resident, start with this. Banks lend less to a non-resident than they do to a resident, so the loan to value you are used to at home is not the one you will be offered here. The exact band moves by bank and by profile, and I am not going to hand you a number that your own bank then contradicts. Ask them for it in writing, early, before you fall in love with a house.

What does not move is the shape of it. You need a significantly bigger cash chunk than a resident would, plus the taxes and costs on top. And those costs are the 37,000 euros we just worked out on a 350,000 euro flat, not something the loan quietly absorbs.

The bank will also do its own valuation, a tasación, and that is what they lend against, not your purchase price. So if you agree 350,000 and the tasación comes back lower, that gap is yours to cover in cash. Banks also cap these loans by your age at the end of the term, and by how much of your income already goes to debt. If you are still paying a mortgage at home, ask early how the bank here treats it.

Which takes me back to the deposit. Get a decision in principle before you sign the arras, not while the clock is already running. Otherwise you are putting 10 percent of the price on a mortgage nobody has approved yet.

On moving the money, two things. First, you cannot pay more than 10,000 euros in physical cash in a transaction in Spain. The rest moves by traceable bank transfer, and that is fine, because it also proves where your funds came from. Second, the exchange rate. If your money is in pounds or dollars and the property is in euros, the rate you get matters a lot on a big transfer.

Specialist currency providers usually beat the high street banks, and some let you lock a rate with a forward contract, so a swing between signing the arras and signing the deed does not cost you thousands. It sounds like a small detail next to a 350,000 euro purchase. On 350,000 euros, a two percent move in the rate is 7,000 euros. It is not a small detail.

What you pay every year once you own it

People focus on the buying and forget the owning. So these are the bills that land every year.

First, the one that catches non-residents out. Even if you never rent the property out, even if it just sits there for your own holidays, you owe an imputed income tax through Modelo 210. The idea is that Spain taxes you on the benefit of having a property at your disposal. The base is 1.1 or 2 percent of the cadastral value, and then it is taxed at 19 percent if you are an EU or EEA resident and 24 percent if you are not.

It is not huge for most homes, but it is real and it is annual, and yes you have to file it. This is exactly the kind of thing we handle for our clients, so they do not get a letter from Hacienda three years later asking for several years at once.

Now, if you do rent it out, this is where your passport turns into money. EU and EEA residents pay 19 percent on the net income, so you deduct your expenses first. Non-EU residents pay 24 percent on the gross, with no deductions at all.

And I need to say this one clearly, because most of our clients are British. Since the 1st of January 2021 the UK is a third country for this. So if you are British and you let your Spanish property, you pay 24 percent, and you lose the right to deduct your costs. Not your mortgage interest, not your community fees, not your repairs, not your insurance. 24 percent of the rent that comes in, before you have paid for a single thing.

That gap, between 19 percent of your profit and 24 percent of your turnover, is for a lot of buyers a bigger number than the ITP saving they were so pleased about at the start of this page. Run it before you buy, not after.

Then the local stuff. IBI, the council property tax, every year. Rubbish tax, basura. Community fees if it is an apartment or an urbanisation. None of these are big on their own, but add them all up so you know the real yearly number.

And wealth tax. As a non-resident you pay it only on what you own here in Spain, above the threshold. The figure that applies to you is the state one, 700,000 euros. You will read that the Comunidad Valenciana raised its allowance to 1,000,000 euros, and it did, but that regional million is written for people who are tax resident in this region. Do not assume it lands on you as a non-resident. Get it checked for your own situation, because the distance between 700,000 and 1,000,000 is a real bill.

And careful with this one. The 300,000 euro main home allowance is only for residents. As a non-resident you do not get it.

One more thing on wealth tax, because you are going to read headlines about it. In late 2025 the Supreme Court ruled, twice, that the so-called 60 percent shield, a cap that stops wealth tax plus income tax eating more than 60 percent of your income tax base, applies to non-residents too. The tax agency accepted it and wrote it into its own wealth tax manual in March 2026. Half the internet read that and started shouting about massive refunds for foreign owners.

Well, here is the honest version. For most people reading this guide, it changes nothing. The shield only bites when your wealth is high and your income is low, it can never cut more than 80 percent of the wealth tax bill, and if you are under the 700,000 euro threshold you were not paying wealth tax in the first place, so there is nothing to shield. The typical holiday home owner is exactly the person it does not help.

Where it is worth a proper look is the other profile: a large estate here and modest income. If that is you, the ruling is real, the tax agency applies it, and past years that are not yet time-barred can be reviewed case by case. That is a sit-down-with-the-numbers job, not a form you fire off because a headline told you to.

Renting it out: the 2026 rules and where the registry stands

If your plan is for the place to earn something while you are not in it, you need the rules before you buy, not after. Because whether a property can legally be a tourist rental depends on the building, the community and the town hall. And you want that checked during due diligence, while you can still change your mind.

Here in the Comunidad Valenciana there is a short-stay line, and which side of it you land on decides everything. Below it you are a tourist rental and you need a tourist licence. Above it you are in a seasonal rental, arrendamiento de temporada, which is a completely different regime with completely different paperwork. Where exactly that line sits is the first thing to pin down for your own plan, and it is worth pinning down properly rather than taking a number off a web page, because people mix these two regimes up constantly and they are not interchangeable.

Second, the community of owners can stop you, and this one changed recently. Since the 3rd of April 2025, a new tourist use needs the approval of three fifths of the owners who also represent three fifths of the ownership quotas. It is a double majority, not a simple show of hands. So if you are buying an apartment to let, the community statutes and the minutes are not optional reading. They are the difference between your plan working and your plan not existing.

And here is the part that is worth real money to you. That rule is not retroactive. It does not touch a tourist rental that was already there. So a flat that already holds its licence and its permission sits in a completely different position from the identical flat next door, where you would still have to go and ask the neighbours. Same building, same view, different asset. That is a due diligence question, and it is one of the few places in this process where the answer changes what a property is actually worth to you.

Then there was a big change in May 2026, and here I have to choose my words carefully, because this is one where being sloppy would cost you.

On the 19th of May 2026 the Supreme Court annulled part of the royal decree that had created the national single registry for short-term rentals, the NRUA. The reason was competence. The State had stepped on the regions' powers. A second ruling against the same decree followed two days later, on the 21st of May. Both are final, and both rulings have been published in the Official State Gazette, the BOE, on the 8th and the 26th of June 2026. That publication is what gives them full general effect, so this is not a pending story any more. The state number is gone.

Now, before you close the tab and cancel your paperwork: that does not mean you can forget about registration. It means the thing you register for has changed. Let me tell you where things stand today.

The identifier in force in the Comunidad Valenciana is the regional VT code. That survives, and that is the one that decides whether your plan is legal here. What also survives the ruling is the digital single window and the obligations on the platforms to hand your data over. The practical side, what Airbnb and Booking actually ask you for at their end, is in transition right now. So if a platform still asks you for a national number, that is not somebody inventing paperwork to annoy you.

Well, what does all that mean for you as a buyer? It means the regional licence is what your plan stands on, and it means you check the property, the community and the town hall before you sign. If somebody selling you a flat tells you the rental side is sorted, that is a claim to verify, not a fact to accept.

Selling later, and what happens when you pass it on

You are buying, so selling feels far away. Two things are worth knowing now, because they change how you set this up today.

When a non-resident sells, the buyer is legally obliged to hold back 3 percent of the price and pay it to the tax office on your behalf, through Modelo 211, within a month of the deed. It is an advance on your capital gains tax, and it is not optional for the buyer.

Your actual gain is then taxed at 19 percent through Modelo 210. And read this next line carefully, because a lot of people carry the wrong idea in their head. That 19 percent is for every non-resident. EU, non-EU, British, American, everybody. The 24 percent you just read about in the rental section does not touch the sale of the property. It is a separate rate, in a separate article of the law. So if somebody told you that Brexit means you pay 24 percent when you sell, they are wrong.

If the 3 percent held back was more than your real tax, or if you sold at a loss, you claim the difference back. There is also the plusvalía municipal, a council tax on the increase in land value. So factor in that the headline sale price is not quite what lands in your account.

And inheritance, which honestly, in my opinion, is one of the biggest reasons to buy on this coast rather than somewhere else. In the Comunidad Valenciana there is a 99 percent reduction on inheritance and gift tax for close family, meaning children, parents and spouses. That is near elimination, and it is not something new for 2026. It was already there.

A 500,000 euro house passed to a child that used to cost a family around 81,000 in tax can now cost a few hundred euros. If you are in your forties and buying a place your kids will one day have to deal with, that is not an abstract number. That is the difference between them keeping the house and them selling the house to pay the tax on it.

What is new from the 1st of June 2026 is a relief for the next circle out, siblings, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, 25 percent from June 2026 rising to 50 percent from June 2027. The European Union forced Spain to apply these advantages to non-residents the same as residents, so you get them whether you live here or not.

So two practical things. Make a Spanish will. It makes the whole inheritance far simpler and cheaper for whoever you leave the property to, and it costs very little to do at the time you buy, when you are already signing things anyway. And if you are buying with family in mind, this Comunidad Valenciana regime genuinely changes the maths in your favour.

How long it takes, and how we work

Start to finish, from getting your NIE to having the deed registered in your name, a clean purchase usually runs a couple of months. It can be faster if everything is in order. It can be slower if due diligence turns up something to fix, which is exactly why you want that check done properly rather than rushed. The delays that hurt are the ones nobody budgeted time for.

We do this for foreign buyers all the time. In person if you come to our offices in Moraira or Dénia, or fully remotely with a power of attorney if you are abroad and cannot keep flying over every time a document needs a signature. If you are in Alicante you are 45 minutes from us, Valencia an hour and a half, and if you are anywhere around Calpe, Jávea, Benissa, Teulada, Dénia, you are basically 20 minutes away.

My father has handled over a thousand property transactions for non-residents over 30 years, ICALI number 4643. He is the lawyer of the family. My job is the tax and the digital side. If you are looking at one town in particular, we have local sites with the detail that only matters there, for Moraira and for Dénia.

And if you want to know what your purchase would really cost before you commit to anything, run your numbers through the estimator, or just send us a message. First conversation, we will tell you honestly whether it makes sense for you. Sometimes the honest answer is wait, and we will say that too.

A quick legal note before you go

One last thing, and Juan makes me say it, because this is a law firm and a law firm has to say it. This guide is general information, current as of July 2026. Tax and property rules in Spain change, sometimes mid-year, as a good deal of what you just read shows. It is not legal or tax advice for your specific situation, and reading it does not make you our client.

Every purchase has its own details. Your nationality, your tax residence, the exact property, and those details change the answer. So before you sign anything or pay any deposit, get advice on your own case. That is exactly what we are here for.