Renting out a property in Spain: two regimes, one front door

Letting out a Spanish property is usually presented as a calculation: yield against effort. It is better understood as a choice between two legal regimes that happen to share a front door. A tourist let and a residential let are governed by different tenancy rules, need different permissions, are taxed at a different point in the system and sit on opposite sides of the VAT line. Choosing one without knowing that is where owners lose money.

Below is what separates them, and the two places where 2026 moved the ground.

The label decides the law

Article 5.e of the Urban Tenancy Act takes tourist letting out of the tenancy regime altogether, but only on a condition that is easy to miss: the letting has to be caught by a regional tourism regime. The exclusion covers the temporary transfer of a whole furnished dwelling, ready for immediate use, marketed through tourist channels, for profit, when it is subject to a specific regime under sectoral tourism rules.

Miss that condition and the letting does not become a residential tenancy either. It falls into the third category, a lease for a use other than a dwelling, with its own rules and no tenant protection to speak of. Short lets that sit outside any regional tourism scheme therefore end up in a legal position most owners have never considered.

The residential route, and the relief you cannot have

Letting to someone as their permanent home means the full tenancy regime. Where the landlord is an individual the tenant can stay five years, seven if the landlord is a company, through compulsory annual extensions, and after that the contract rolls over for up to three more years. Since 2023 there are further extraordinary extensions in declared stressed markets.

The compensation for that, if you are resident in Spain, is a large tax relief. Net income from letting a dwelling as a permanent home is reduced before tax: 50 per cent as the default, 60 per cent where the dwelling was renovated in the two years before the contract, 70 per cent where a first-time landlord lets to a tenant aged 18 to 35 in a declared stressed market or lets to a public body or qualifying non-profit, and 90 per cent where a new contract in a stressed market cuts the rent by more than 5 per cent. Contracts signed before 26 May 2023 keep the old flat 60 per cent.

None of that is available to a non-resident. The non-resident income tax act says it plainly: in calculating the base, the multipliers and the reductions of the personal income tax act do not apply. What EU and EEA residents get instead is the right to deduct expenses, which is a different and much smaller thing. The tax authority's own worked example for rental income on the non-resident return has no reduction step in it at all.

This matters because the relief is exactly what makes long-term letting attractive on paper, and it is quoted constantly in guides written for a Spanish audience. Read on a non-resident's numbers, the long let looks very different.

The tourist route: a licence, and it is regional

There is no national permission to obtain. The registration procedure Spain created in 2024 and started in July 2025 was struck down in part by three Supreme Court judgments in May and June 2026, for lack of state competence. What survived is the digital single window, the platforms' duty to transmit monthly activity data, and the power to order a listing taken down within 48 hours. What did not survive is the state registration procedure and the state registration number.

The EU regulation on short-term rental data that applies from 20 May 2026 does not fill that gap. It harmonises registration schemes where a member state has one; it does not oblige a member state to create one. Where a scheme exists it must work on the host's own declaration and issue a number automatically, and platforms must then collect that number, display it on the listing and check it at random. In Spain, after the annulments, the only number a platform can be shown is a regional or local one.

So the question is which region:

• Comunitat Valenciana. Stays of ten days or fewer, a favourable municipal planning compatibility report, entry in the regional tourism register valid five years and renewable in the month before it expires. Whole dwellings only; letting by the room is prohibited. Municipalities may cap numbers by building or area.
• Andalucía. A declaración responsable to the regional tourism department, effective immediately, with entry in the regional tourism register. Since 2024 they are called dwellings for tourist use, municipalities may cap numbers per building or area, and a dwelling is excluded outright where the building's constitutive deed or statutes expressly prohibit tourist accommodation.
• Canarias. Since December 2025 two layers: the municipality must first zone for it, reserving at least 90 per cent of residential buildability for residential use only, then a declaración responsable to the island council, valid five years.
• Illes Balears. The one to check before you buy. Since June 2026 no new declaration of tourist activity may be filed anywhere in the Balearics for a dwelling under horizontal property. In plain terms, no new tourist letting of flats. Terraced, semi-detached and detached houses sharing a plot are the exception.
• Cataluña. A prior planning licence in 262 listed municipalities, valid five years, with a ceiling of ten tourist dwellings per 100 inhabitants awarded competitively. Existing operations in those municipalities must obtain the licence or stop. The constitutional challenge to this regime failed in March 2025.
• Comunidad de Madrid. Since April 2026 a declaración responsable that must state the municipal planning permission, a suitability certificate, confirmation that the building's statutes do not prohibit the activity, and a certificate that the community of owners has approved it. In the city of Madrid the municipal licence is the real gate.
• Murcia. A declaración responsable to the regional tourism institute with immediate effect and no expiry, and the region now asks for the community's express approval as part of the filing.

Your neighbours can stop you before you start

Since April 2025 the owner of a dwelling who wants to carry on tourist letting must obtain the prior express approval of the community of owners. That is a standing requirement on the owner, not something that only bites once the community has voted on the subject. The majority needed, three fifths of owners representing three fifths of the participation quotas, is the same majority the community needs to approve, limit, condition or prohibit the activity, and it may also load up to 20 per cent more common expenses on the dwelling doing it. Those community resolutions have no retroactive effect, so existing operations are protected. A purchase made in order to let is not.

Read the statutes and the minutes before you make an offer, not after.

What you actually pay

Rental income goes on the non-resident return, modelo 210. Residents of the EU, Iceland and Norway, and of Liechtenstein since July 2021, pay 19 per cent and may deduct expenses directly and inseparably linked to the Spanish activity. Everyone else pays 24 per cent of the gross with nothing deducted. That split, not the rent, is usually the biggest single number in the calculation.

One filing change that trips people up: for rental income the grouping is annual and it is mandatory, not optional. One return covering the calendar year, filed in the first twenty calendar days of January. Quarterly filing for rent is gone.

What you owe in your own country is separate, and the annual non-resident return keeps running even in the months the property sits empty. That side is in non-resident property tax in Spain.

VAT: the trap is the contract, not the cleaning

Letting a dwelling is VAT-exempt. The exemption falls away where the landlord undertakes to provide any of the ancillary services characteristic of the hotel trade, and the statute gives an open list: restaurant, cleaning, laundry or anything analogous. The trigger is the contractual obligation and a single service is enough. At that point the letting becomes a taxable service at the reduced 10 per cent rate.

The familiar refinement, that cleaning at the start and end of a stay is fine while cleaning during it is not, comes from the tax authority's published guidance rather than from the statute. Useful, and worth following, but it is doctrine, and an inspector's starting point will be the wording of your contract.

The platform reports you

This is the part owners underestimate. Under the EU rules on platform reporting, a letting platform files an annual return with its own tax authority by 31 January, and that authority then exchanges the data automatically, within two months of the end of the period, with the tax authority of the state where the host is resident and in every case with the tax authority of the state where the property is located.

What goes across is specific: the address of each listing and its land registry reference, the total consideration paid or credited in each quarter, the number of lettings per listing, and where available the number of days each listing was let and the type of property. Alongside that, the host's name, address, tax number and the fees, commissions and taxes withheld.

Spain's earlier domestic version of this, the platform declaration introduced in 2017, was annulled by the Supreme Court in 2020. The current route is the EU one, filed in Spain on modelo 238, and its reporting blocks go down to the number of days let. An undeclared Spanish let is not a quiet arrangement.

Questions we get

Can I let it out at all if the community has not voted on the subject?
The statute requires prior express approval from the community before the activity starts. Silence is not approval.

Is a long let better than a holiday let for a non-resident?
It can be, but not for the reason usually given. The big reduction on residential letting income is closed to non-residents. Compare the two on the rate, the expenses you can actually deduct, the licence you would need and the vacancy you would carry.

Do I need a NIE to let out a property I already own?
You will already have one, because the deed could not have been registered in your name without it. If a co-owner was added later without one, that is the gap to close first: see what is a NIE number in Spain.

Does letting change what I pay when I sell?
Not the rate. The gain is taxed the same way, and the buyer's 3 per cent retention still applies: see selling a property in Spain.

Why Buenaley?

Buenaley is a Spanish law firm working with international clients. Around a property that is going to be let there are two things we take off your hands, in this order.

The first is the NIE. Nothing goes into your name at the registry without it, and it is the step that most often holds up a completion. We handle that through our NIE service, for every person who appears on the deed.

The second is the property itself: the registry and planning checks, the community statutes and minutes read before the offer rather than after, the regional licence route for the specific municipality, the deposit contract, the tax position on completion and the deed at the notary.

• NIE applications for every buyer, started on day one
• Community statutes and minutes checked for a tourist-letting prohibition
• The regional and municipal licence route confirmed for the actual address
• Registry, charges, community debts and planning status verified
• Completion under power of attorney if you cannot travel

Buying with letting in mind, or already letting and unsure the paperwork matches what the region now requires? Send us the address and we will tell you which regime it falls under and what is missing. Or start with the NIE application, because nothing completes without it.