Blog

Read this before you sign in Spain

Arras, taxes, notary, mortgage. Every Spanish purchase hides costs nobody explains. Each article names one.

LatestNon-residents5 min read

The deposit contract decides whether you can walk away — and it rarely says so in plain words

You've already read on this blog what happens if your mortgage falls through without the right clause. The deposit contract itself is where that risk either gets controlled, or quietly left open.

Read the article

Non-residents5 min readThe debt you can inherit just by buying — even if you never missed a paymentYou check the price, the taxes, the mortgage. The community fees owed by someone who hasn't lived there in months rarely cross a buyer's mind — until they land on their own account.Read the article

Non-residents5 min readThe one document that tells you if the seller actually owns what they're selling youThe listing photos look clean. The price looks right. None of that tells you whether the seller can actually sell, or what's quietly attached to the property before you sign.Read the article

Mortgages5 min readThe bank's insurance quote isn't a condition of your mortgage. It's the one they hope you won't questionA Spanish lender's mortgage offer usually arrives with an insurance policy already built into it. It reads like a condition of the loan. Most of it isn't.Read the article

Non-residents6 min readCan you still get a mortgage in Spain as a UK buyer after Brexit?You've found the house. The mortgage is where it gets complicated — and not the way most listings make it sound.Read the article

Non-residents5 min readNew build or resale: the tax changes completely, and the brochure never mentions itTwo identical-looking Spanish properties, same price, same street — and a different tax bill, because of a distinction most buyers never ask about: who is actually selling it to you.Read the article

Non-residents5 min readThe NIE number: the one piece of paper that stops a Spanish property purchase coldEverything else about buying in Spain — the mortgage, the notary, the taxes already covered on this blog — assumes you have a NIE. If you don't, none of it can actually happen yet.Read the article

Non-residents6 min readThe Spanish tax bill that arrives even if you never visit your own houseYou paid for the house. You pay the community fees. Spain still sends you a tax bill for a rent you never charged anyone — because you didn't need to earn money from it to owe tax on it.Read the article

Non-residents6 min readWhat notary and registry fees actually cost when you buy in SpainYou've heard the 2019 law made notary fees free in Spain. It did. Just not for the bill you're about to get.Read the article

Non-residents5 min readYou don't have to fly to Spain for every signature — but the paperwork that avoids it has its own rulesTaking a day off work to fly out and sign one document, more than once, is exactly the kind of friction a short legal document was built to remove. Most buyers never look into it until a deadline makes them.Read the article

Non-residents7 min readHow much tax will you actually pay buying a house in Spain?The mortgage is approved. The deposit is paid. Then a five-figure bill shows up that nobody put on your checklist — and it isn't optional.Read the article

Non-residents6 min readRenegotiating your Spanish mortgage: what actually costs you stamp duty, and what doesn'tYou locked in your Spanish mortgage rate years ago. Rates have moved since. The one thing stopping people from asking for a better deal is a tax fear that, for the one change that matters most, doesn't apply.Read the article

Non-residents6 min readWhen you sell your Spanish property, your buyer keeps 3% of it — here's why, and how to get it backYou agree a price, you go to the notary, and 3% of what you were owed never reaches your account. Your buyer didn't keep it. The law made them hand it straight to Hacienda, on your behalf.Read the article

Non-residents5 min readThe Golden Visa is gone. Buying a Spanish property was never quite the residency shortcut it sounded like, and now it isn't one at allSpain's property-investment residency scheme, the one most people still call the Golden Visa, is no longer available to new buyers. If you've seen it mentioned as a reason to buy, that reason is now out of date.Read the article

Non-residents6 min readDying with a property in Spain doesn't mean Spanish law gets to decide who inherits it — unless you let itMost of what British owners assume about inheriting Spanish property is only half right. The tax is narrower than people expect. The succession rules are wider — and they can reach further than the property itself.Read the article

Check your Landing Score. Two minutes.

Get my Landing Score

I want my mortgage