The Occupation Licence in Spain (Valencia Region): the Guide for Foreign Owners and Buyers

Somewhere in your Spanish paperwork there is a document your estate agent called the occupation licence. Or there should be, and that is the problem: the water company asks for it, a buyer's lawyer wants it before completion, or somebody has just said "it is being sorted".

My name is Daniel Bertomeu and I work alongside my father Juan Bertomeu, a lawyer with offices in Moraira and Dénia since 1991. We are independent lawyers and tax advisors for international owners; Juan is the lawyer of the family, ICALI number 4643, and occupation files are his side of the desk. Mine is the tax and the paperwork.

So, the short answer first, because it surprises almost everyone. In the Valencia region the occupation licence, as a licence the town hall grants you, no longer exists for homes in almost every town. Since a decree the regional government passed in January 2021, what exists is a responsible declaration: a document you file, that works from the very day you file it, and that the town hall checks afterwards. Sometimes years afterwards. Some town halls kept their own local rules for a while, and we get to that near the end. Whether you are buying, selling, sitting on an old cédula or inheriting, everything below hangs off that one change.

And one distinction before anything else: this paper is about your right to use the house, not about whether it was legally built. Nearly every expensive surprise here comes from fusing them.

The licence that stopped being a licence

Under the old system you applied, waited, and one day the town hall handed you a licence of first occupation. Now nobody hands you anything: on the back of a certificate signed by a technician, you declare under your own responsibility that the home complies, you file, and from that same day you can legally occupy and use the property. The planning law gives a correctly filed declaration the same effects as a municipal licence, good against the administration and anyone else.

Filed, not approved. That pair of words carries the whole system. Nothing arrives in the post; the control comes afterwards, if it comes, and the responsibility sits with the person who signed and with the technician behind the certificate.

What does it certify? Three things: that what was built matches the project the building licence was granted for, that the home meets habitability conditions, and that it is fit to be used as a dwelling.

The four things this paper is not

It is not a building licence. It is not a legalisation: a declaration of occupation never converts an irregular extension into a legal one. It is not the tourist rental licence, a separate registration with its own rules, covered on our tourist rental licence page. And it is not the energy certificate.

Nor is it replaced by the deed, the nota simple, twenty years of paid IBI receipts, old utility bills or decades of family Augusts in the house. Those prove other things. None is an occupation title.

Buying a resale: the ten year clock nobody mentions

The 2021 decree contains a renewal rule, for buyers of existing homes the most practical thing on this page. Once ten years have passed since the first occupation, the declaration must be renewed when one of two things happens: the property is transferred again, or a new contract for water, gas or electricity has to be signed.

A purchase is a transfer. The villa you like was first occupied fifteen years ago? Then your purchase lands well past the ten year mark and a renewal declaration is due, and the moment to deal with it is before completion, as part of the deal, not after you own the problem.

Two details earn their keep. Switching supply company does not count as a new contract. And with no sale and no new supply contract, the ten year clock by itself forces nothing: it arms the renewal, a transfer or a new contract pulls the trigger.

The old papers, the cédula de habitabilidad from the nineties, the licence of first occupation from before the decree? They do not spare the renewal once the ten years have passed and a trigger lands, and the decree treats pre-2021 cédulas and licences as expired once the occupation changes. Exactly when a given old paper lapses has corners to it, so have yours read rather than assumed.

One more thing buyers never expect: for second and later occupations the duty to file sits on the owners, before occupying. The notary will not do it, the Land Registry does not check it, and a sale can be civilly valid yet hand you keys to a house you cannot legally connect. Who files, when, and at whose cost belongs in writing in the arras or option contract, before anyone pays anything.

Before you sign, ask the seller for the previous occupation title or honest proof of it in process, the building licence if the home is recent or visibly reformed, and the latest utility bills. Then note four dates, previous occupation, last change of hands, any cancellation of supplies, planned completion: they decide whether your purchase needs a renewal at all. The wider homework is in our buying property in Spain guide and the property purchase checklist.

Buying off plan: do not complete without it

New build is simpler: the developer files the first occupation declaration once the building is genuinely finished and the works licence conditions are met. The file is not small: dated colour photographs of the building and the bordering streets, the final works certificate signed by the technical directors and stamped by their professional colleges, the works handover act, and, where applicable, the final urbanisation certificate. A second layer is held and produced at inspection: fire compliance, acoustic and energy certificates, telecoms, construction waste destination, and a supply companies' document confirming definitive supply available or ready to contract.

One rule: without the declaration filed, the building cannot legally be used, whatever the sales office says. Condition your completion, and your money, on that filing.

Delivered in phases? The decree allows partial declarations for parts that genuinely function independently, if that independence is specifically justified in the file, not assumed from the brochure.

Selling: a certificate with a three month fuse

Selling? If the ten year rule has been triggered, the buyer's side will ask for the second occupation declaration, whose heart is one document: a certificate from a competent technician stating that the home still matches the conditions under which the previous occupation title was granted. Where required, the Building Book or the building evaluation report travels with it.

That certificate goes wrong in two ways, and we see both constantly. Content: a generic report saying the house is in good condition gets the file returned; the certificate has to connect the current state of the home with the conditions of the previous title, point to point, so brief your technician properly. Calendar: the certificate is valid for three months from the day it is signed. Sign it in March for a completion that slips to July and you are filing a dead certificate, a quiet weakness in the whole file.

And one warning for sellers of reformed homes. If works essentially changed the conditions under which the old title was obtained, the law sends you back to a first occupation declaration, however long ago those works happened. An enclosed terrace that became a dining room, a pergola that became a lounge, a semi-basement that became a guest flat: details to the owner, a different file to the law. A full change of use, premises turned home, is first occupation territory too, and the declaration does not replace the planning permission the conversion itself needed.

The tax side of selling, the retention the buyer's side keeps back and the rest, is covered in our selling property in Spain guide.

After you file: ten working days, then a silence that means nothing

The town hall has ten working days to examine the declaration and its documents. If something is missing, it sends a formal cure request, which suspends the effects of your declaration until you fix the defects. Answer point by point, with a technician's certificate confirming each item individually; a vague reply does not count. Fail to cure in time and you are treated as having withdrawn, the effects are extinguished, and the town hall tells the Land Registry and the water, electricity, gas, telephone and telecoms companies. That is how paperwork becomes a supplies problem, then a resale problem.

Then, usually, silence. And I need you to hear this the way Juan says it across the desk: the silence means nothing. There is no positive silence here, no moment when the file ripens into approval. A Supreme Court ruling from 2023 settled that the administration can verify a responsible declaration at any moment while the declared use lasts, with no predetermined time limit. That open ended power is the price of being allowed to start from day one.

So your position after filing: legally occupying, from day one, under a condition. If a later check establishes the requirements were never met, the cover disappears. For a house that genuinely complies, the condition never bites.

When the town hall pushes back, and the shields you have

What can end the right you declared? The decree names the causes: an essential inaccuracy, falsehood or omission in the declaration or its documents, failing to produce documentation you declared you hold, or the home breaching the requirements of the declared use.

The declaration states that the property is not sitting in an open planning enforcement file. If that is false, the declaration can be stripped of effect with liabilities on top, and a declaration filed while an enforcement file is already open is void from the start. Not weakened. Void.

Now the shields.

First: nothing ends informally. Extinguishing your right takes a reasoned resolution declaring the declaration ineffective, a decision that closes the administrative route and can be fought in court. Warning letters and inspectors' comments end nothing.

Second: the six month window. Where the home does not meet the requirements of its use, the decree expects the town hall to adopt cessation measures within six months of the filing. If it does not, and a third party acting in good faith is damaged, the town hall itself answers for that damage, then recovers from whoever declared. That shield was built for the buyer who relied in good faith on a filed declaration.

Third: proportionality, from the courts. Specific, minor non-conformities compatible with safety and health do not block occupation while they are fixed or legalised. A 2024 ruling of the Valencian High Court went further: a first occupation declaration takes effect on filing and can only be invalidated in the cases the law actually lists, essential falsehood, substantial breaches, never minor irregularities already consolidated that do not affect habitability. And a minor irregularity the town hall previously let pass cannot be dug up years later against you.

The other end of the scale: with an essential falsehood, the use must stop from the moment it is established. The resolution does not revoke a licence, there never was one; it declares you were never covered. Restoration measures ride along, sealing, demolition of what was built without cover, and courts usually refuse to keep the use running during the litigation. No acquired rights, no compensation. The exit is speed: good faith and quick curing, a corrected declaration or an application for the proper title, can keep sanctions off the table.

The villa that never had a licence

Every month somebody sits down with us holding decades of IBI receipts, a water meter spinning since the eighties, and no occupation title of any kind. Can the declaration fix it?

Sometimes. The decree has a route for homes that never had an occupation title, opening when the property changes hands or a new supply contract is needed. It runs like a second occupation with one difference that does all the work: the certificate must state that the home meets the conditions required for the use it is put to. Your technician is asked to stand behind the house as it is today. Some can. Some cannot.

But hear the limit, because the courts have been blunt. This route is not an amnesty, and it only works where there is no live planning illegality in the way. A 2023 ruling of the Valencian High Court put it plainly: the first requirement for first occupation is that the construction itself is covered by its building licence, and the responsible declaration cannot be used to dodge planning discipline. The age of the house is not an argument, the catastro entry is not an argument, the water has always worked is not an argument. Those things prove the house exists. They do not make it legal.

The four year rule people half know: serious planning infractions generally become time barred after four years, which is why long administrative inaction can consolidate an old irregular extension; on specially protected land that clock never runs. Time barring only means the town hall can no longer order the thing undone; it manufactures no title, and whether occupation can honestly be declared is a separate question.

If the house sits on rustic land, that is a longer conversation, written up in rustic property on the Costa Blanca. Two flags: forest zone or flood risk homes now need, in certain cases, a land registry certificate in the occupation file, and files there carry extra sectoral paperwork. Then there is the drainage.

The septic tank nobody photographs

The baseline rule: where a public sewer network exists, the home must discharge into it, and each town concretises when connection is compulsory and when an individual system is accepted. They genuinely differ. Benissa's ordinance requires every urban building to connect to the public network, and where an area is not connected it requires wastewater to be treated by total oxidation, or an equivalent treatment, in a proper prefabricated plant. Xàbia draws its line with a tape measure: connection is required at one hundred metres or less, measured from the nearest corner of the plot along the road axes to the nearest point of the network, with the alternatives reserved, transitionally, for isolated single family homes.

So when a seller shrugs that there is a depuradora in the garden, the answer is paperwork: technical sheet, model reference, capacity, manufacturer's declaration, applicable marking, and installation or commissioning certificate. If that dossier does not exist, price the risk or walk away.

Inheriting: the file the family never mentions

If the house has come to you through a death, I am sorry, and you need one planning sentence before the utility companies teach it to you. Inheritance transfers ownership and cures nothing: you can be the entirely legitimate owner of a home with no occupation title, and discover it the day you try to put the electricity in your name, or sell.

The pattern repeats: a cédula from another era or nothing at all, supplies cancelled when the house emptied, heirs assuming the water will come back because it always ran. It might not: in practice many supply companies ask for a current occupation title before they contract. When we handle an estate with property here, the occupation question goes on the table next to the will. The succession side itself is covered in our guide to inheriting Spanish property as a non-resident.

Same decree, different town halls

Everything above is regional law, but the decree left the town halls room to move, and they use it.

Some municipalities kept, by local ordinance, the power to subject occupation to an express licence, and some may ask for a certificate from an administrative certification body or a professional college alongside the declaration. To complicate things, the legal hook for that local carve out was removed with effect from the start of 2024, and municipal practice has not all moved at the same speed. Translated into human: what your town applied two years ago may not be what it applies today; only the current ordinance of your town hall counts.

On paper, the decree forbids town halls from demanding more documents than it lists. In practice, extra paperwork appears anyway under separate sectoral rules. Both of those sentences are true at once.

Each town keeps its own forms, electronic office, fee and inspection habits, so never reuse a form across municipalities. Two examples. Dénia runs separate procedures for first occupation, second occupation, homes with no previous title and rustic land, and for the no title cases its portal says to check first whether a cédula or licence ever existed, especially pre-1995. València, for second occupation, requires residential use in the Catastro, no pending planning file, and no filing during renovation works.

Doing all of this from abroad

The good news: the whole file can run without you setting foot in Spain, through a representative. The decree also allows municipal checks by electronic means, fed with electronic photographs or unedited video endorsed by the technician.

The town hall fee? No single figure exists; each municipality sets its own. Anyone quoting one number for the whole region is guessing.

How we work, if you want us

We do this from Moraira and Dénia. In person if you are here, remotely with a power of attorney if you are not. An initial consultation is from 150 euros plus VAT, and occupation work is quoted per file once we have seen the papers, because a clean renewal on a recent apartment and an eighties villa with no title and an undocumented septic tank are not the same job.

If your question is about one town, we keep local sites with the local detail, for Moraira, for Dénia and for Jávea.

FAQ

Is there still an occupation licence in the Valencia region?

Not as a licence the town hall grants. Since a regional decree of January 2021, every occupation of a home runs on a responsible declaration: filed with the right documents, it lets you occupy legally from the day of filing, with the town hall checking afterwards. Some municipalities kept local rules, so check your town's current ordinance.

Is an old cédula de habitabilidad still valid when I buy?

Do not rely on it. Ten years past the first occupation, a renewal is due on a transfer or a new water, gas or electricity contract; an old cédula or licence does not spare you that, and the decree treats pre-2021 papers as expired once the occupation changes. Deal with it before completion, in writing.

Can the utility companies refuse to connect me without it?

In practice, yes: many supply companies ask for a current occupation title before contracting. And when a declaration fails and its effects are extinguished, the town hall tells the Land Registry and the water, electricity, gas, telephone and telecoms companies. Electricity years ago guarantees nothing today.

Does the declaration make an old illegal extension legal?

No. It covers the use of the home and legalises nothing. It is void if filed while an enforcement file is open, and the Valencian High Court has held it cannot be used to dodge planning discipline. The four year time bar, never on specially protected land, only spends the power to order things undone; it creates no title.

How long is the technician's certificate valid?

Three months from signature, for first and for later occupations. An expired certificate builds a weakness into the file, so coordinate the signing date with the real filing or completion date.

Can I run the whole file from abroad?

Yes. It normally runs through an authorised representative, and the decree lets the inspection run on electronic means, including photographs and unedited video endorsed by the technician. We run complete files for owners who never set foot in Spain.

Where these figures come from

Every rule and deadline above comes from these sources:

About this article

Written by Daniel Bertomeu, tax adviser, AEDAF #06838 and APAFCV #3080, for Expat Abogados. The legal points in this article were reviewed by Juan Bertomeu, abogado, ICALI #4643, in practice since 1991 in Moraira and Dénia.

General orientation for foreign owners and buyers of homes in the Valencia region, current as of August 2026, not legal advice for your specific property. The rules are regional but the practice is municipal: check your dates, your documents and your town hall's position before relying on them.