What it costs to own a home here

Reviewed 26 October 2026. We look after properties from Estepona to Sotogrande, and these are the bills we handle on behalf of owners who live somewhere else. This page is information, not tax advice.

Five of them, and only the first two are set by anyone official.

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Why we do not publish an average

Because an average of these five is not a number, it is a guess dressed up. Community fees alone run from a few hundred euros a year in a small block to several thousand in a gated community with permanent staff, and the difference between two neighbouring urbanisations can be larger than the difference between two municipalities. A buyer who budgets from a published average is going to be wrong, usually in the expensive direction.

What is worth having instead is the real figure for the actual property: the IBI receipt, the community's own accounts and approved budget, and the last twelve months of utility bills. Those exist, and they can be asked for before you commit.

This is the one that genuinely surprises people. If you are not resident in Spain and you own a home here that you do not rent out, Spanish law treats you as receiving a notional income from it, and taxes that. There is no rent, no tenant and no money coming in, and the tax is still due.

The notional amount is a percentage of the cadastral value of the property: two per cent as a general rule, reduced to one point one per cent where the cadastral values in that municipality have been revised within the period the law allows. It is declared on form 210.

It is a modest amount for most properties. The problem is that nobody tells buyers it exists, so it arrives as a letter rather than as a line in a budget.

This is the single most useful thing on this page, and it explains something owners find baffling: two neighbours with the same rental income, paying very different tax.

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Read those two rows together and the gap is much wider than five points. A British owner is taxed on the whole rent at the higher rate; an Irish or Dutch owner is taxed on what is left after the costs of earning it, at the lower one. On the same property, the difference over a year is usually the largest single tax item either of them faces here.

It is not something anyone can plan away, but it is something to know before you model what a property will net you, and it is a reason not to trust a yield figure that was calculated for somebody else.

The filing calendar for form 210 changed this year, by ministerial order published in June 2026. Many guides, and some official pages that have not been updated, still describe the old quarterly rhythm.

If your gestor is working from the old calendar, this is worth a conversation with them before the next deadline rather than after it.

Spain taxes wealth, and a non resident is assessed only on assets located in Spain. Three things are worth knowing and the rest belongs with a tax adviser.

There is an exempt threshold of 700,000 euros, which applies to non residents too. Below it there is normally nothing to pay and nothing to file.

Andalucía applies a regional relief that reduces the resulting liability, and a non resident whose Spanish property is in Andalucía is entitled to use the regional rules. Our whole service area qualifies, Cádiz province included, so Sotogrande and San Roque are in the same position as Estepona, Casares and Manilva.

The relief does not remove the obligation to file. Where the gross value of your Spanish assets exceeds two million euros, a return is required even if the relief brings the amount payable to nothing. Owners at that level who assume the relief means silence are the ones who get a letter.

Two mechanics, both of which catch sellers out because the money moves before they see it.

The buyer withholds three per cent of the price and pays it to the tax authority on your behalf, on form 211, within a month of completion. It is a payment on account, not the tax itself. The gain is then declared on form 210, taxed at nineteen per cent for any non resident, and the three per cent is credited against it. If the withholding exceeds the tax due, the difference is reclaimed, and that takes time.

There is also the municipal tax on the increase in land value, the plusvalía. Where the seller is a non resident individual, Spanish law makes the buyer liable for it, so in practice the buyer withholds this too. If there was no increase in value, the tax does not apply, but that has to be demonstrated rather than assumed.

We are not tax advisers and we do not file returns. What we do is narrower and, for most owners, the part that was missing.

We hold the paperwork these bills come from, so the figures exist when somebody asks for them: the IBI receipt, the community budget and minutes, the utility history, and a monthly statement that itemises what was spent on the property. When an owner's gestor asks for a year of records, that is a reply rather than a search.

And before anyone buys, we can tell them what the five bills in section 01 actually are for that property, from the community's own documents rather than from an average.

Tax belongs with a gestor fiscal and the decisions in a purchase belong with a lawyer. We can point you to both.