The tourist rental licence in Andalucía

Reviewed 26 October 2026. We manage properties from Estepona to Sotogrande, so we work with these rules for every property we take on. This page is information, not legal advice.

A vivienda de uso turístico is a home offered to tourists for payment, advertised through any tourist channel, for stays priced by the night or the week. It is registered in the Registro de Turismo de Andalucía.

You file a declaración responsable. The word matters: it is a declaration, not an application. You state that the property meets the requirements, and you may advertise once it is filed and your code is issued. The Junta checks afterwards, and a declaration that turns out to be wrong can cost you the registration.

VFT or VUT? There is only one right answer, and most pages get it wrong

You will find both written across the internet, including on the sites of agencies that should know better.

Until Decreto 31/2024, in force since 22 February 2024, the category was called vivienda con fines turísticos and codes were issued as VFT. That decree renamed it vivienda de uso turístico, and every code is now VUT, for example VUT/MA for Málaga and VUT/CA for Cádiz.

That includes properties registered before the change. A home that was VFT/MA/00000 is now VUT/MA/00000: the number itself does not change, the Registro converts the prefix automatically in its own system, and there is nothing to re-register and no form to file. What the owner does have to do is change the letters wherever the property is advertised, on your own listings and on every portal. The Junta says so in as many words in its guidance for homes already registered. So if you still see VFT on a listing today, the listing is out of date, and if your own paperwork from before 2024 shows VFT on the page, that is simply an older printout.

In 2024 the Spanish government created a single national registry for short-term rentals, with a registration number of its own, through Real Decreto 1312/2024. For about a year owners were told they needed both a regional licence and a national number.

On 19 May 2026 the Supreme Court annulled the heart of it. The judgment is Sentencia 620/2026 (ECLI:ES:TS:2026:2148). It struck down the articles that created the national registration procedure, on the ground that the State did not have the competence to establish it.

What that means for you: there is no national registration number to obtain.

What it does not mean: the regional licence is untouched. The judgment left the regional registers standing, so in Andalucía the registration with the Junta is required exactly as before. A property let to tourists without it is being let illegally, whatever happened to the national registry.

Parts of the same decree survived, including the digital single window and the obligation on booking platforms to share data about the listings they publish.

This is the part owners underestimate, and it changed fundamentally last year.

Until April 2025, letting to tourists inside a community was allowed unless the community had expressly forbidden it. Ley Orgánica 1/2025 reversed that. Since 3 April 2025, article 7.3 of the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal requires the owner to obtain the community's express approval before operating. Silence is no longer consent.

The majority is set by article 17.12 of the same law: three fifths of the owners, who must also represent three fifths of the participation quotas. The same majority can approve, limit, condition or prohibit tourist use, and the agreement has to be recorded and registered.

Three things worth knowing before you walk into a meeting:

• It has to be a properly minuted vote at a general meeting. A letter from the president of the community is not a community agreement, however friendly the president is.
• A community may also raise the share of common expenses charged to a property used for tourist letting. That increase is capped at 20 per cent.
• The change is not retroactive, but the exemption is narrower than most owners assume. Under the second additional provision of the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, an owner may carry on only where two things were both true: the property was already being let under the tourism rules, and its registration was already in force on 3 April 2025. The date you bought is irrelevant. The Dirección General de Seguridad Jurídica y Fe Pública confirmed this in a decision of 30 July 2025, in a case where the buyer completed in February 2025 but the registration was only issued that April, and the community's approval was still required. This is why a property whose registration was already in force before that date is worth more than the identical one next door without one.

If your community has not voted, arranging that vote is the first thing to do, and the timetable belongs to the community's meeting calendar, not to yours.

This is the part almost nobody explains, and it is where the expensive mistakes happen.

The licence does not die when the property is sold. It attaches to the dwelling rather than to the person, so a buyer does not start from zero.

But it does not pass across by itself either. The new owner files a Comunicación de cambio de titularidad with the Registro de Turismo through its electronic office, attaching an updated nota simple informativa from the Land Registry and quoting the existing registration number. Done properly, the property keeps the same registration number and the letting carries on without a gap.

If you are buying because the property can be let: ask for the registration certificate from the Registro de Turismo before you sign, check the number is live, and make sure nothing in the contract has the seller cancelling it.

If you are selling: the registration is part of what you are selling. Do not cancel it as tidying up.

Beyond the paperwork, the rules set out what has to be physically in the home. This is the minimum, not a standard to aim at, and it is what an inspection looks for.

Owners are often surprised that the bathroom items are an obligation rather than a courtesy. They are, and a missing hairdryer is as much a defect as a missing smoke alarm.

• Your code goes in every advertisement, on every channel, without exception.
• Guest data is reported. Every stay is registered through the Ministry of the Interior's system.
• You declare the periods in which the property operates, and the number of places, and you keep that current.

The obligations sit with whoever is named as the operator of the property. A management company running the letting for you does not move that. It stays with you, and the company acts in your name. It is worth knowing which of the two you are signing.

A town hall may set proportionate limits on tourist homes in its area for reasons of general interest, including a maximum number per building, sector or area. Those limits have to be made public before they apply, and they have to rest on clear and objective criteria.

Several municipalities on the Costa del Sol have done this, and others have announced an intention to. The position is not the same in every town, and it changes. The only answer worth anything is the one for your address, checked on the day you ask.

We look after properties from Estepona to Sotogrande, and we check the position for each property before anyone commits to anything.

Most of the money owners lose on this is lost early: on a property that was never going to be licensed, or on a purchase where the licence quietly disappeared between the offer and the notary.

If you would like to know whether your property can be registered, tell us where it is and we will tell you what we see.

The decisions that matter in a purchase or a dispute belong with a lawyer, and tax belongs with a gestor fiscal. We can point you to both.