Cost of buying property in Spain 2026: the full bill for Valencia and the Costa Blanca

How much on top of the price: the short answer

For the Valencian Community, completions from June 1, 2026, agency commission excluded:

Paperwork here means the notary, the Land Registry and the gestoría, together between €1,200 and €2,000 on a €200,000 property, most often around €1,500. The notary and registry tariffs grow more slowly than the price, so the share shrinks as the price rises: on a €400,000 apartment the paperwork comes to roughly €1,800, no longer 0.7% but about 0.45%.

The rest of the article takes each line apart and shows where people usually lose money.

ITP: the main tax when buying resale property

Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales, the property transfer tax. It does the job stamp duty does in the UK: the main tax on the purchase itself. The nearest American equivalent, transfer tax, is a poor guide here: thirteen states charge none at all, and where it exists it is usually a fraction of a percent and usually the seller's bill. The buyer pays it within one month of signing at the notary, on form 600. The rate is set by each region, and that is the first thing to understand: figures quoted for Madrid or Andalusia have nothing to do with Valencia, however confidently an English-language forum repeats them. That one-month deadline is regional too: other regions may set a different one.

From June 1, 2026 the general rate in the Valencian Community is 9%. Before that date it was 10%. The change was made by Law 5/2025 of the Generalitat and now sits in the consolidated text of Law 13/1997. If the property costs more than a million euros, an 11% rate applies to the whole price, not just the slice above the threshold. This is exactly where British buyers trip up: stamp duty back home works in bands, and this does not. On a €1.2 million property the tax is €132,000, not €112,000.

What the cut is worth in actual money:

Reduced rates exist, but they are not a general first-time-buyer relief of the kind British buyers may remember from home. They serve narrow categories of buyer.

The mechanism works like this. First you check whether you fall into a category at all; only then does the price matter, and €180,000 acts as a switch between two pairs of rates, not as an eligibility threshold.

The income limit is not measured on your salary but on your Spanish tax return: the taxable base cannot exceed €30,000 if you file individually or €47,000 if a couple files jointly. For large and single-parent families in the special category the thresholds are higher, €35,000 and €58,000. That classification is decided separately from the income limit above. The special category means five children or more, and also four when at least three of them arrived together, whether by birth, adoption or permanent or pre-adoptive fostering, or when the annual household income divided by the number of members stays under 75 percent of the minimum wage. A child with a disability or unable to work counts as two (article 4 of Law 40/2003). Which category applies to you is written on the large-family certificate itself. The limit applies to under-35s, to large and single-parent families and to women who have suffered gender-based violence; it does not apply to the disability reliefs or to VPO.

And a detail that often costs money: the reduced rate applies only to the share of the property bought by the person who qualifies. If one spouse is 34 and the other 37, the relief covers half.

If you are over 35 and fit none of the categories, your rate is 9% whatever your income, or 11% if the property costs more than a million euros. Skip the reliefs and move on.

Check the categories and conditions on the Valencian tax agency's portal as at the date of your completion: the parameters shift with each regional budget. Getting this wrong is expensive in both directions. You can overpay, and you can receive a supplementary assessment.

Valor de referencia: why the tax can ignore your price

The tax is calculated on the higher of two figures: the price in the deed or the cadastre's reference value. This is where buyers lose money most often, and for anyone used to buying in Britain, where the taxman charges you on what you actually paid, it is the single most surprising fact in the whole process.

Spain worked that way too, until 2022. Since then the base for ITP has been the reference value (valor de referencia) that the cadastre calculates for every property, whenever it exceeds the price. The rule is short: the tax office takes the bigger number. Buy at €100,000 while the cadastre rates the property at €150,000, and you pay tax on €150,000. So say articles 10 and 30 of the transfer tax law.

In our example the difference looks like this: 9% of €100,000 is €9,000, while 9% of €150,000 is already €13,500. Four and a half thousand euros that nobody had budgeted for.

The million-euro threshold above which the rate becomes 11% is measured on that same base. A property bought for €980,000 with a reference value of €1,020,000 is taxed at 11%: the bill comes to €112,200. At 9% on that same base it would have been €91,800, so crossing the threshold itself costs €20,400. Measured against 9% of the price you actually paid, which is how budgets usually get planned and comes to €88,200, the gap is €24,000.

The way I usually put the tax office's logic to clients: "Our cadastral data says this apartment is worth 150,000. We do not care what you actually paid for it; pay the tax on 150." By the time that letter arrives there is nobody left to argue with, and no point.

It bites hardest on properties in poor condition and on hard-won discounts. You negotiated a fair price, the tax office ran its own tables, and a few months later a supplementary assessment turns up with a penalty attached.

The good news: the reference value can be checked in advance, in a couple of minutes, free, on the cadastre's online portal. It can be challenged too, but not in advance. Either you have already paid, in which case you file a request to correct your own self-assessment and reclaim the excess; or the tax office has issued you an assessment, and that one is appealed in the ordinary way with nothing to pay until it is decided. Either way the last word belongs to the cadastre: the tax office must ask it for a report, and that report is binding on them.

From SFERO's practice. We check the reference value before the client puts down a deposit. Not after the reservation is signed, when the money is already in someone else's hands, but before. That one step has saved clients from a nasty surprise several times: if the taxable base sits far above the price, that is a reason to redo the budget, to negotiate further, or to walk away.

New builds: VAT plus stamp duty

Buying from a developer is taxed differently. Instead of ITP there are two taxes.

VAT (IVA) is 10% of the price. The rate is national, set by Law 37/1992. Officially protected housing under the special regime pays 4%.

Stamp duty (AJD) is regional. In the Valencian Community the general rate from June 1, 2026 is 1.4%, down from 1.5%.

And now the relief that hardly anyone writes about. If the new build is bought as your main home, stamp duty is 0.1% instead of 1.4%. On a €200,000 apartment that is €200 instead of €2,800. A difference of two thousand six hundred euros, purely for knowing the relief exists and claiming it at completion.

The law states the condition briefly. The 0.1% rate applies to "first copies of notarial deeds documenting the acquisition of a main home" (adquisiciones de vivienda habitual), with "main home" defined by Spain's national income tax rules.

Notice what the condition does not contain: no price ceiling, no income limit, no age cap. But "main home" here is a tax term, not everyday language. Under Spanish income tax rules it means a property you actually move into within twelve months of buying and live in continuously for at least three years. Which carries one blunt caveat for this coast: a holiday home does not qualify.

What happens if the condition breaks. You rent it out, you move away, you never move in, and you are the one who has to put it right: file a corrected return within one month of the breach and pay the difference between the 0.1% you paid and the full 1.4%, plus late interest. On a €200,000 apartment that is the same €2,600, plus interest. The law makes an exception where the move is forced on you: death, marriage, separation, a job transfer, a first job or a change of job. If you are buying a second home or a rental investment, pay the general 1.4% from the start and carry no risk. If you are moving to Spain outright, claim your 0.1%.

One more thing. The developer is not allowed to pass its own registration costs on to you: the declaration of new construction, the horizontal division of the building, the cancellation of its own construction mortgage, and connecting the shared utilities to a home that is supposed to be handed over fit to live in. The consumer protection law names such clauses expressly as abusive. If lines like that have appeared in your contract, have them struck out. And if you have already signed, such a clause is void: it has no effect, and what you paid under it can be reclaimed.

Notary, Land Registry and gestoría: the tariff and the reality

All three together come to between €1,200 and €2,000 on a €200,000 property, most often around €1,500. Worth taking apart one by one, partly because of the myths, and partly because the first thing a foreign buyer needs to hear is what a Spanish notary is not.

The notary. Not your solicitor. The notary is an impartial public official who certifies the deed and checks the legality of the transaction for both sides at once; nobody at that table looks after your interests specifically, the way your own conveyancer would in Britain, or your own attorney in the American states where buyers hire one. The fees are state-set by Royal Decree 1426/1989, so a notary cannot quote whatever they like. For a €200,000 transaction the base tariff works out at around €340. The bill then grows with the pages of the deed, certified copies and VAT, so in practice you see €600–1,000. The old advice to "budget a thousand" is less a myth than the top end.

Registration at the Land Registry. The tariff comes from Royal Decree 1427/1989; the base figure on the same €200,000 is about €177. With the add-ons and VAT the usual bill is €300–500.

The gestoría. This one has no counterpart in Britain or the US, so it needs a sentence of its own. A gestoría is an administrative firm that collects the deed from the notary, pays the tax, lodges the papers at the Land Registry and walks the title through to registration in your name. The price is a market one, not regulated, usually €300–500. Formally you can do all of it yourself. In practice, without Spanish and a feel for the bureaucracy it is a slow and risky path, and missing the one-month tax deadline costs more than the gestoría does.

A detail that matters: this money is needed before completion, not after. The notary does not release the documents until the bill is paid.

Mortgages: who pays what since the 2019 law

If you are borrowing, the bank pays for almost all of the loan's paperwork. This is one of the most underrated lines of the whole bill: people pay for things they are not obliged to pay for.

Until 2019 almost every mortgage cost was pushed onto the borrower. Law 5/2019 on mortgage credit agreements changed that and spelled out who pays for what. Stamp duty is the exception: it moved to the bank not under this law but under the 2018 tax rule that named the lender as the taxpayer on mortgage deeds.

Of the whole list, then, the only line that is always yours is the valuation, usually €250–450. And you pay it whatever happens, even if the bank then declines the loan: the valuer has done the work.

The same law gives you two tools the bank will not volunteer. At least ten days before signing, it must hand you a document pack with the draft contract and a breakdown of every cost, which is what you check the table above against. And the notary, chosen by you rather than by the bank, is obliged to go through that pack with you free of charge before completion.

The arrangement fee (comisión de apertura) deserves its own paragraph. Some banks charge nothing; others take up to 1% of the loan. On €150,000 of borrowing that is fifteen hundred euros in one go. By law it must be a single fee covering all the bank's costs of assessing and setting up the application, so splitting it into several separate charges is not allowed.

And the insurance. The bank will always require damage coverage on the property itself, and that is not the bank being awkward: for loans issued under the mortgage-market rules, which is essentially every residential mortgage a Spanish bank writes, the regulation requires the property to be insured for no less than the appraised value of the building, land excluded. Around €200–300 a year. Life insurance the law does not oblige you to buy, but neither does it stop the bank making it a condition of the loan, sometimes with several years paid upfront in exchange for a lower rate.

And a right nobody at the branch will mention. The bank has to accept a policy from any other insurer with equivalent coverage, both when you sign and at every annual renewal. It cannot charge you for reviewing your policy, and accepting it cannot worsen any term of the loan, the interest rate included. Article 17.3 of that same Law 5/2019 says so. Do the sum on a calculator, not in your head: the saving on the interest rate does not always cover the cost of the policy.

Estate agent fees in Spain: who actually pays

No Spanish law divides the commission between the parties. There is custom, and it varies by region.

The general rule: the seller pays, and the fee is already built into the asking price. The buyer pays nothing on top. If you have only ever bought in Britain, this is also the only arrangement you have ever known, which is exactly why the exception catches people out. American buyers should not assume the seller always pays either: since the 2024 settlement, a seller covering the buyer's agent is still common but no longer automatic.

Because in parts of the Valencian market a different practice has taken hold: the agency bills the buyer, usually 3% plus VAT on the price. On a €200,000 apartment that is €6,000 plus €1,260 of tax, more than seven thousand in total. And the sum rarely appears in the listing: you see the price, you ring, and only then do you learn about the agency's fees.

What to do in practice: ask about the commission before the viewing, not after you have fallen for the apartment. One question on the phone saves seven thousand euros and a good deal of grief, and lets you compare properties honestly.

What the agency should give you in return, if you are the one paying: a reference-value check before the deposit, a check of debts and liens, negotiation with the seller and support through to registration at the Land Registry. Judge them against that list, not against the shopfront.

The deposit: how much to put down and what it protects

The deposit itself is not part of the bill: it counts toward the price. But it is the money you lose if there is not enough left for everything else.

Two steps are standard here. A reservation contract takes the property off the market, usually for €1,000–3,000. The deposit contract (contrato de arras) is signed next, and that one is serious: as a rule around 10% of the price. The reservation payment normally counts toward the deposit, but that is a matter for the contract: check that it says so. If you know exchange of contracts in Britain, or an earnest money deposit in the US, arras will feel familiar, with one Spanish twist.

The twist is that the protection cuts both ways. Walk away and the seller keeps your deposit. If the seller walks away, they owe you double the sum back. That is not a gesture of goodwill; it is a standard clause of the contract. Check it is there before you sign.

What to write into the arras beyond the price and the dates:

• no debts or charges on the property;
• approved works levies (derrama) as a separate line, not folded into a general phrase about debts;
• how this year's IBI (the annual property tax) is split;
• the seller's obligation to produce the community's certificate of no debts and the minutes of recent meetings.

And the rule worth more than any clause: do not pay a deposit until the checks on the property are finished. If you are being rushed and told about other keen buyers at exactly the moment you ask for documents, that is a signal in itself.

The costs nobody warns you about

Everything above will be quoted to you by any agency. What follows is what people remember when the money is already spent.

The seller's plusvalía that can become yours

The municipal tax on the increase in land value is the seller's to pay. But there is an exception aimed squarely at foreign transactions: if the seller is an individual and not a Spanish tax resident, the buyer is liable for the tax. If the seller is a company, foreign or not, the rule does not apply: the company pays. The law calls this substitution of the taxpayer, and it is written into article 106 of the local finance law.

The state's logic is plain: chasing a non-resident who has left the country is hard, so the duty lands on the person who stays behind with the property. If you pay in the seller's place, you have a legal right to recover the money from them: article 36.3 of the General Tax Law says so expressly. But chasing somebody who has already left is hard, so the matter is settled before completion: factor the tax into your budget and negotiate it off the price. The amount can be found out in advance, since the town hall works it out from the cadastral value of the land and the years of ownership, and many town halls put a calculator on their website.

One more reason not to shrug it off: the registry will not record the transfer of title until it is shown that the tax return has been filed. What is required is the filing, not the payment; but somebody has to file it, and if the seller has left, that somebody is you.

The 3% retention when buying from a non-resident

Another obligation on the buyer, and it blindsides almost everyone.

If the seller is not a Spanish tax resident, the buyer must withhold 3% of the price and pay it to the tax office on form 211 within a month. It is an advance on the seller's capital gains tax. Article 25.2 of the non-resident income tax law requires it; the procedure is described on the tax agency's site.

Now the part that concerns the Costa Blanca specifically. A large share of resale homes on this coast are sold by other British owners, and a British seller who lives in the UK, or who only ever summered here, is exactly the non-resident this rule is about. Buying from a compatriot feels like the safe, familiar option. It is also precisely the case where the 3% duty is yours, and nobody at the table may think to mention it.

Suppose you did not withhold it and handed the seller the full price. The obligation has not gone anywhere, and the apartment itself remains encumbered by the debt. The seller is in another country; the demand will find you.

Strictly speaking this is not an extra cost: the 3% goes to the tax authority instead of the seller, out of the same price. But if you do not know the mechanics, it is easy to hand the full amount over and then fund the retention out of your own pocket.

What to ask the seller for. No retention is needed if they produce a tax office certificate showing they pay Spanish income or corporate tax, and that document settles the question at completion. And if the seller resists the retention, the answer is simple: it is a payment on account, not a confiscation. They file a final return and get the difference back.

IBI for the year of purchase

IBI, the annual municipal property tax, the closest thing Spain has to council tax in Britain or property tax in the US, is owed by whoever owned the property on January 1. Buy in July and, technically, the seller is the taxpayer for the whole of the current year.

Then comes the part buyers do not know about. Article 63.2 of the local finance law lets the seller bill you for a share of the tax in proportion to your days of ownership, and the Supreme Court confirmed this back in 2016 (judgment 409/2016 of June 15). It works as the default rule: if the contract says nothing, the seller may demand the share from you.

Want a different split? Put it in the contract in so many words. Silence works against you.

The second point matters more than the money: unpaid IBI encumbers the property itself. Check the receipts for recent years rather than taking anyone's word for it.

Debts to the community of owners

The previous owner's debts to the community of owners (comunidad de propietarios) travel with the apartment. If you have owned a leasehold apartment in Britain, think of unpaid service charges that become yours on completion. This is the line that catches out more buyers than any other.

Under the horizontal property law the apartment is liable for community debts for the current year and the three previous ones. Buy a home with arrears and you will be the one paying, whoever ran them up.

The protection is simple: before completion the seller must produce a certificate of no debts signed by the community's secretary. Without it the notary should refuse to sign the deed, but confirm the document actually exists and is recent.

Derrama: the major-works levy

Works levies catch people after the move, when the budget has long since been spent.

A derrama is a levy approved by the owners' general meeting for major works: the roof, the lift, the facade. The sums can be serious: ten thousand euros per apartment is not unusual, and they are spread over months or years.

The legal rule, article 17.11 of the horizontal property law: a levy for improvements is paid by whoever owns the apartment when each installment falls due. So the meeting may have voted for a new lift a year ago, the payments start after your purchase, and they are yours.

But if the work is not an improvement and instead is essential repair, a leaking roof or an unsafe facade, it counts as ordinary community expenditure, and the rule already covered applies: the apartment answers for whatever is unpaid for the current year and the three before it, even if it was charged before your time.

What to do: request not only the certificate of no debts but the minutes of the community's recent meetings. And put the derrama into the deposit contract as its own line, not buried under a general "free of debts and liens". That distinction is exactly where the arguments start.

The rubbish collection charge

Since April 2025 a waste collection charge has been mandatory in every Spanish municipality: Law 7/2022 on waste requires it. Before that many towns had no separate charge; it sat inside other payments.

The amount depends on the municipality and the type of property, typically from a few dozen euros to around a hundred and fifty a year. Not much, but the line is new, and running-cost estimates written before it appeared do not include it.

The small items that add up to a couple of thousand

None of these looks frightening on its own. Together they add up to a sum you will notice.

The figures below are market reference points as of August 2026, not tariffs. Except the NIE fee, the nota simple and the power of attorney: those follow official tariffs.

Three lines deserve a closer look.

The banker's draft is the easiest item on the list to overlook. The notary requires a guaranteed means of payment, the bank charges a percentage of the amount plus a minimum fee to issue the draft, and that price is not capped by law: every bank sets its own. On a large purchase it is no longer small change but over a thousand euros. Ask your bank for its rates in advance, and ask about a transfer as well: what the notary needs is a traceable means of payment, not a draft specifically.

The lawyer at 1% is two thousand euros on a €200,000 property. Every guide to buying in Spain tells you an independent lawyer is non-negotiable, and the advice has decades of hard-earned history behind it: the notary, as we said, is not acting for you. The honest version is that it is a decision, not a reflex. If the transaction is run by an agency with its own legal department doing the checks described in this article, you can weigh up whether you need one. If you are buying privately from an individual, do not skimp here.

The power of attorney is worth drawing up wider than the transaction strictly needs. If you are buying together with relatives who are not in Spain right now, a power of attorney from them lets you sign everything without them flying over. A Spanish notary charges little for it, and a Spanish consulate abroad issues it as a Spanish document outright: no apostille, no sworn translation.

A separate note for non-residents: opening an account at a Spanish bank is usually free, but you will need a certificate of non-residency, and there is a fee for that.

Cost of buying property in Spain: the full bill on a €200,000 apartment

Valencian Community, completions from June 1, 2026.

If you are borrowing, add the valuation (€250–450) and the arrangement fee if your bank charges one (up to 1% of the loan). The rest of the mortgage costs sit with the bank.

If the agency bills its commission to you, add about €7,260 (3% plus VAT).

In sterling, at around 85p to the euro: the €19,450 on a resale is roughly £16,500, the notary's €600–1,000 about £510–850, a lawyer at 1% about £1,700, and an agency invoice of €7,260 about £6,200. In dollars, at around $1.10 to the euro, the same four figures are about $21,400, $660–1,100, $2,200 and $8,000. Exchange rates move, so recheck before you budget.

The notary, registration and gestoría figures give the rough order of cost, not a tariff: the exact bill depends on the number of pages, copies and additional entries.

The budget above leaves out the costs from the previous section: the 3% withholding and the plusvalía of a non-resident seller, this year's IBI, community debts and derramas, the waste collection charge, and the small items such as the NIE, the banker's draft and the power of attorney. Add whichever ones apply to your purchase.

What to divide your budget by in 2026

Simple arithmetic I use myself at a first consultation.

You know what you have to spend, and you want to know what price bracket to be viewing.

An example: you have €220,000 and you are buying a resale with the commission on the seller. 220,000 divided by 1.10 = €200,000. That is your ceiling for the asking price. The divisors are rounded up, so you keep a small margin.

What these divisors do not contain, and what to subtract separately if it applies to you:

• your own lawyer (around 1% of the price);
• the small items from the section above: NIE, banker's draft, power of attorney, translations;
• the seller's plusvalía, if the seller turns out to be a non-resident.

With a lawyer and the small items, the real ceiling on your budget drops by a few thousand more. Better to build that in now than to discover it at completion.

The "divide by 1.15" rule from that video dates from the 10% ITP rate, with the commission assumed to be on the buyer. After the June cut it errs in your favor, but exact sums beat rules of thumb.

When we do the sums. At a first consultation we spread the client's budget across the lines of this table and show the price ceiling before any viewings start. That way nobody has to hear, halfway through the process, that the dream apartment is out of reach. Want this worked through for your situation? Message us on WhatsApp +34 664 02 87 80 or see legal and tax support.

What changed in 2026, what never happened, and what ended earlier

What changed. On June 1, 2026 the Valencian Community cut ITP from 10% to 9% and stamp duty from 1.5% to 1.4%. For a resale buyer this is the most visible news of the year.

What never happened. In January 2025 the Spanish government announced a tax of up to 100% on home purchases by non-residents from outside the EU, and the British press gave it headlines to match, because after Brexit "outside the EU" includes the British. The story still does the rounds on expat forums as if it were a done deal. A bill was indeed introduced in May 2025. Since then it has not once been debated in parliament and has not become law: the minority government lacks the votes, and the legal footing of the idea is contested at both constitutional and EU level.

As of August 2026 no extra tax on foreign buyers exists. If somebody tells you otherwise, ask them to cite the law.

What ended earlier. The Golden Visa for property investment was abolished on April 3, 2025 by Organic Law 1/2025. Offers of "invest from €500,000 and receive residency" no longer work, and the sites still publishing them have simply not been updated.

Checklist before you pay a deposit

The deposit is the point of no return: from that moment the money is no longer yours if the deal collapses through your fault. For scale, a reservation contract here is usually €1,000–3,000 and the deposit contract (contrato de arras) around 10% of the price. Everything below happens before it.

1. Check the property's reference value on the cadastre's portal and recalculate the tax from it, not from the price.
2. Establish who pays the agency's commission, and how much it is.
3. Order a nota simple from the Land Registry: who owns the property, what charges and mortgages sit on it.
4. Request the certificate of no debts to the community of owners.
5. Request the minutes of the community's recent meetings and check for approved works levies.
6. Check the IBI receipts for recent years.
7. Establish the seller's tax residency. A non-resident means the 3% retention falls to you, and possibly their plusvalía too. On this coast, do not assume: plenty of British sellers are non-residents.
8. Write into the deposit contract, each as its own line: the derrama, the IBI split, the seller's obligation to produce the documents.
9. Make sure the money for the notary, registry and gestoría (twelve hundred to two thousand euros) is sitting in the account, not "coming by the signing date".

What to do with all of this

If you take one thing away, take this: the price in the listing is not the price of the purchase, but roughly nine tenths of it.

The good news: the costs have come down. The ITP cut to 9% and the 0.1% stamp duty on a new build bought as a main home leave thousands of euros with the buyer. The bad news: nearly every calculator and article online still works on the old rates, and some of the costs never appear in them at all.

Three things genuinely decide the outcome.

Check the reference value before the deposit. Two minutes of work, and the difference can run to several thousand.

Find out who pays the commission before the first viewing. Seven thousand euros is not a sum to learn about at the end.

Ask for the minutes of the community's meetings, not just the certificate of no debts. An approved roof repair is not a debt yet, but you will be the one paying for it.

The rest is all in the table above. And the last thing I tell clients at a first meeting: better to learn the truth now than at the notary's table.

Frequently asked questions