Mortgage in Spain for Non-Residents 2026: Rates, How Much Banks Lend, and How to Get One

Can a non-resident get a mortgage in Spain, and how much will the bank lend?

Yes. Article 2 of Law 5/2019 on real estate credit agreements, which sets out who the law applies to, contains no residency requirement: the law protects an individual borrower whenever the loan is secured by a home or taken out to buy one.

By non-resident I mean someone who is not a Spanish tax resident: someone who has not spent more than 183 days in Spain in a calendar year and whose main center of economic interests is not here (article 9 of the personal income tax act). Article 9 also contains a family rule. If your spouse and the minor children who depend on you live in Spain for more than 183 days in a calendar year, the law treats you as a Spanish tax resident too, unless you prove otherwise. This rule does not apply if you and your spouse are legally separated. If your family lives here and you live in the US, check your status with a tax adviser before you buy: your status determines whether the tax covered in the tax section applies to you.

The law does not say how much a bank may lend. The 60% and 80% figures sometimes presented as a legal cap come from article 23 of Royal Decree-Law 24/2021, a government act with the force of law, and they describe which loans a bank may use to back its mortgage covered bonds (cédulas hipotecarias), securities it issues to investors, not how much it is allowed to lend. The power to restrict lending terms belongs to the Bank of Spain, the country's central bank, which received it under Royal Decree-Law 22/2018. But the Bank of Spain's banking supervision report for 2025 lists such limits among the tools that "have not so far needed to be activated," and in its spring 2026 Financial Stability Report the central bank writes that it is still analyzing them and has not made a decision.

Across the market as a whole, the average loan-to-value on new mortgages, meaning the loan as a share of the property's appraised value, was 69.7% at the end of 2025 (Bank of Spain, spring 2026). That figure covers all borrowers; we found no separate statistics for non-residents in the open data of the Bank of Spain or INE.

For non-residents, banks quote a lower ceiling than for residents, who, according to the mortgage broker hipotecas.me as of September 2026, are usually offered up to 80%. What each lender publishes for non-residents is collected in the table below. The figures for CaixaBank, UCI, and Bankinter come from their own pages (UCI is not a bank but a financial credit institution, an establecimiento financiero de crédito, or EFC), and the rest come from the broker's summary, compiled from the banks' websites in September 2026. This is market practice, not law: the bank sets its final terms after assessing your ability to repay.

Only CaixaBank has a page that names the US, as far as we found; for the other lenders we found no published statement on US residents (more below).

The purpose of the purchase also affects the terms. According to the same broker's summary, a bank may treat a property bought to rent out more cautiously than a second home, including on loan-to-value, so tell the bank the purpose from the start. Do not count on future rental income: we found no published rules under which a bank would count it toward your income, and CaixaBank's document checklist mentions only rental income you already receive.

Banks usually calculate the loan-to-value from the appraisal (tasación), the official valuation of the property: that is how hipotecas.me describes the terms. If the appraiser puts the value below the price, you make up the difference yourself. An apartment priced at €200,000 and appraised at €190,000 gets you a 70% loan of €133,000, not €140,000.

A real example. In a 2025 video (in Russian, like all my videos cited here), I told the story of a friend who got a mortgage after two rejections over a poor credit history: what helped was putting down half the apartment's price himself. That year's terms are out of date, but the logic still holds: "The more of your own money you put in, the lower the risk for the bank."

How much of your own money you need to buy with a mortgage

Your own money has to cover two things: the part of the price the bank does not lend, and the costs of buying (closing costs, in US terms). CaixaBank, in its terms for non-residents, puts it this way: 30% of the price plus roughly 12–15% for taxes and costs, about 42–45% of the property's value in total.

In the Valencian Community, the region around Valencia and the Costa Blanca, the biggest cost of buying a resale property is the property transfer tax (ITP), 9% of the price since June 1, 2026 (article 33 of the Valencian regional Law 5/2025), or 9% of the property's cadastral reference value (valor de referencia) if that value is higher than the price (article 10.2 of the act governing this tax). By our estimate, the costs on top of the price, excluding the real estate agency's commission, which the seller usually pays, come to about 10% here for a resale property and 11–12% for new construction; if the commission is charged to you, add about another 3.6% of the price (3% plus VAT). That gives two benchmarks for a €200,000 apartment:

• a 70% loan: a 30% down payment plus 10–15% in costs, 40–45% of the price in total, or €80,000–90,000;
• a 60% loan: a 40% down payment plus the same costs, 50–55% of the price in total, or €100,000–110,000.

The down payment has to be your own money. CaixaBank's document checklist says so explicitly: your own funds may not come from external financing, and you prove where they came from with statements. On top of that, budget for the appraisal: by law you pay for it (article 14.1.e of Law 5/2019), and in CaixaBank's example it costs €289.

Current mortgage rates in Spain, fall 2026

A variable rate (an adjustable rate, in US terms) is calculated as Euribor plus the bank's own margin, called the spread (diferencial). Euribor (spelled Euríbor in Spanish bank documents) shows the rate at which large European banks lend to one another, and 12-month Euribor is one of the official benchmarks of the Spanish mortgage market. Every month the Bank of Spain publishes the Euribor figure in Spain's official gazette, the BOE: 2.954% for August and 3.247% for September 2026. According to the Bank of Spain itself, Euribor rose 1.075 points over the year.

The rise did not start last month. According to the Bank of Spain's table, Euribor stood at 2.221% in February 2026 and 2.855% in July. On September 10, the European Central Bank raised its rates by 0.25 percentage points, citing inflationary pressure from the conflict in the Middle East; the previous increase came in June. In my September news roundup, I put it this way: "After almost two years of declines, Euribor is rising again." I will not try to forecast it; the calculation below shows what happens to the payment if Euribor rises another point.

According to INE statistics, the average rate on new home mortgages across Spain in July 2026 was 3.01%, with an average term of 26 years and an average loan of €180,785, and 62.3% of mortgages were taken out at a fixed rate. The Bank of Spain has its own average rate on home purchase mortgages, calculated by a different method: 3.134% for August.

The INE and Bank of Spain averages cover all borrowers, so for a non-resident they are only a reference point. The section on borrower rights explains why CaixaBank's fully discounted 2.80% is misleading.

Fixed, variable, or mixed: which rate suits a non-resident

A fixed rate stays the same for the whole term. A variable rate is reset, and, as I said in the same roundup, most banks do this every 6 or 12 months. A mixed rate starts with a fixed period and turns variable after it. Initial rates in July 2026 were almost identical (see the table above).

The law treats these options differently in two respects. On a variable rate, the bank may not set a floor, and it must attach to its offer a calculation of payments under different rate scenarios (articles 21 and 14.1.c of Law 5/2019). Early repayment fees (prepayment penalties, in US terms) also differ. On a variable rate, the bank's fee is capped at 0.15% of the amount repaid in the first five years or 0.25% in the first three years, with the option chosen in the contract, and after that there is no fee (article 23.5). On a fixed rate, the cap is 2% in the first 10 years and 1.5% after that (article 23.7). On €50,000 of early repayment, that is €75–125, versus €750–1,000; on a mixed rate, each cap applies to its own part of the term. Switching later from a variable to a fixed rate, by agreement with your bank or by moving to another one, costs no more than 0.05% in the first three years and nothing after that (article 23.6). The law limits the price of such a switch but does not require the bank to offer one.

Nobody can say in advance which option will turn out cheaper, so it makes more sense to decide based on how much risk you can live with. A fixed rate removes the risk of a rising payment, and you pay for that with more expensive early repayment and with a rate that will not fall if the market does. In a 2025 video, I put it briefly: "Predictability is a luxury." For a non-resident with non-euro income, this argument carries more weight: the exchange rate already moves the payment, and a variable rate adds a second risk on top.

The check is simple. Ask the bank to calculate the payment with Euribor one and two points above today's level: the bank must answer your questions about the offer documents, using examples at different rates (article 14.2). If that payment does not fit your budget, a variable rate is not for you, however low the initial rate. And the choice is not always yours. In its buyer's guide, CaixaBank offers a fixed rate in euros to borrowers with income in euros. With income in pounds, US dollars, or five other currencies, the guide gives you a choice between a fixed rate in the currency of your income and a variable rate in euros, while with income in, for example, Polish złoty, Czech koruna, or Hungarian forint, it offers only a variable rate in euros. The guide was published in 2025, and the bank's 2026 page makes no such distinction, so if your income is not in euros, ask the bank in writing what rate it will give you and in what currency (other banks' terms are collected in the bank table).

How much you pay each month: four rate scenarios

In CaixaBank's example, the loan is repaid in level monthly installments: the same amount every month as long as the rate does not change. The formula is P = L × r / (1 − (1 + r)^−n), where L is the loan amount, r the annual rate divided by 12, and n the number of months. Applied to the bank's own example (€150,000 over 20 years at 3.80%), the formula gives €893.24 a month, exactly as CaixaBank shows.

Take a €200,000 apartment and a 70% loan, that is, €140,000 over 20 years: the maximum term CaixaBank offers non-residents with income in euros or seven other currencies, including pounds sterling and US dollars. The fixed euro rate in the second row of the table below is the one CaixaBank's 2025 guide offers to borrowers with income in euros (more).

Between CaixaBank's fixed rate and the variable rate after a one-point rise in Euribor, the gap is €109 a month and more than €26,000 in interest over the term, if the rate stays there. The 1-point spread in the variable scenarios is my assumption for the example, not a market figure: each bank sets its own.

The law does not set a maximum ratio of payment to income. It requires the bank to assess creditworthiness thoroughly, taking into account employment, current and expected income, savings, regular expenses, and other debts (article 11.1). The market rule of thumb is that the payment should not exceed 30–35% of net (after-tax) income, and in a 2025 video I called that rule the standard for non-residents. For a payment of €834 (about $934 or £707 at the October 5 reference rate), that means net income of about €2,380 a month at 35% and about €2,780 at 30%.

In the September roundup, I gave an example: a €150,000 mortgage over 25 years at Euribor plus 1 percentage point had become about €60 a month more expensive in a year. Recalculated with the Bank of Spain's October 1 figure, the increase is larger. Euribor rose 1.075 points over the year, the rate on such a loan went from about 3.17% to 4.25%, and at the reset a year after signing, the payment went up from about €725 to €809, an increase of €84. My €60 corresponds to a rise in Euribor of about three-quarters of a point.

Who pays what when the mortgage is set up

The costs of arranging the loan are allocated by article 14.1.e of Law 5/2019, and since November 10, 2018, the stamp duty on the mortgage deed has been paid by the bank: Royal Decree-Law 17/2018 made the lender liable for it under article 29 of the act governing that tax. The mortgage deed here means the notarized loan agreement secured by the home, and stamp duty (actos jurídicos documentados, AJD) means the tax charged on notarized documents of this kind. It is not the purchase tax that UK buyers know as stamp duty: the purchase itself is taxed separately, mainly through the property transfer tax (ITP) or VAT, which the buyer pays.

Beyond what the table lists, the law forbids charging for anything the bank did not do: costs and fees are allowed only for services you requested or expressly accepted and that were actually provided (article 14.3). The bank must show all the costs, itemized, in the draft contract you receive along with the offer (article 14.1.d).

The costs of the purchase itself are separate from the mortgage, and taking a loan does not make them any smaller: the property transfer tax or VAT and the notary's and registry fees for the sale are paid on top. They are covered in our article on the cost of buying property in Spain.

What the law guarantees the borrower

Ten days to decide

At least 10 calendar days before signing, the bank must give you a set of documents (article 14.1 of Law 5/2019). The main one is the FEIN, the European standardized information sheet (called the ESIS in the English text of EU law): the bank's binding offer, valid for at least 10 days. It comes with the FiAE (Ficha de Advertencias Estandarizadas, a sheet of warnings about risky terms), the draft contract with all the costs, and the written terms of any insurance the bank requires. Check the FEIN against what you were promised verbally: this is the document the law calls the binding offer.

A free consultation with a notary

During those 10 days, and no later than the day before signing, you must attend an in-person consultation with a notary of your choice. The notary goes through the FEIN and the FiAE with you term by term, you take a test the notary gives you, and all of this is recorded in a free notarial record. Without that record, the notary will not let the mortgage deed be signed, and the registrar will not register it. Your representative under a power of attorney can attend in your place; the law does not say what exactly they may do on your behalf, such as taking the test, so settle this with the notary in advance. These rules are set out in articles 15 and 22.2 of the law.

If you do not understand Spanish, at the signing a notary who speaks your language translates the document's content for you orally or, at your request, drafts it as a bilingual deed, the two languages side by side. If the notary does not speak your language, you need an interpreter, appointed by you, who also signs the document (article 150 of the notarial regulations). So choose a notary who speaks a language you understand.

Tied and bundled products

Selling a mortgage only as a package with other financial products is forbidden (article 17.1). The bank may require insurance, covered below, and may link the loan to a product that services the loan itself: as an example, the Bank of Spain names an account for the payments (article 17.4). Bundling is also allowed: the mortgage is cheaper if you take other products as well. In that case the bank must show the offer with and without the products and state the price of each product (articles 17.6 and 17.7).

CaixaBank's offer for non-residents shows why the law has this rule. The rate drops from 3.80% to 2.80%, a quarter of a percentage point for each of four products (your salary paid into the account together with bill payments and card spending, home insurance, life insurance, and a security alarm). By the bank's own calculation for a €150,000 loan over 20 years, the discount saves €18,305 in interest. But you pay for the insurance and the alarm yourself, and the total cost of the loan (everything you pay for the loan beyond the amount borrowed, including costs and these products) falls by only €566. In that example, the bank also priced the life insurance for a 30-year-old borrower, with the policy covering half the loan: €227 a year, not rising with age. If your policy costs more than €255 a year, the discounts taken together will not cover the cost of these products. The bank checks the conditions every month and may raise the rate if any of them stops being met. Compare offers by total cost, not by rate. In the FEIN, that cost is shown by the TAE (tasa anual equivalente), Spain's counterpart of the APR, which the law expressly names as the figure for comparing offers (Annex I of Law 5/2019): in CaixaBank's example, the TAE is 4.398% before discounts and 4.374% with all of them.

Insurance

The only insurance required with a mortgage is home insurance against fire and other damage: so says the Bank of Spain, which adds in its blog for bank customers that no other insurance is mandatory. The law does not make life insurance mandatory, but it allows the bank to require a policy that guarantees repayment of the loan as a condition of its offer (article 17.3). In either case the bank must accept an equivalent policy from any other insurer, both at signing and at every renewal, without charging to review it and without worsening the loan terms. With an outside policy, though, as the Bank of Spain warns in the same blog, you will not get the discount for the bank's own policy, so compare the outside policy's price with the size of the discount.

Early repayment

You can repay the loan in full or in part at any time; if the contract requires you to notify the bank in advance, the notice period may not exceed one month (article 23.1). The law allows no fees other than those described above (article 23.4). Insurance tied to the loan ends on repayment unless you choose to keep it, and the unused part of the premium is refunded (article 23.3). A temporary waiver of these fees on variable-rate mortgages applied until December 31, 2024 (Royal Decree-Law 19/2022), and the consolidated text of that decree-law shows no extension.

If you cannot pay

The bank can demand the whole debt at once only if three conditions are met together, all listed in article 24. First, there is a payment default. Second, the unpaid installments add up to 3% of the amount lent if the default occurs in the first half of the term, or 7% in the second half; the condition is also met at 12 or 15 unpaid monthly installments, respectively. Third, the bank has demanded payment, given at least a month to pay, and warned that otherwise it will claim the whole debt. For a €140,000 loan, 3% is €4,200: just over five payments of €834, so the threshold is reached with the sixth missed payment. Default interest equals the ordinary rate plus 3 percentage points and is charged only on overdue principal (article 25 of Law 5/2019). If the full debt still goes unpaid, the apartment is usually sold at auction, and if the proceeds fall short, the bank is entitled to recover the remaining debt from your other assets and income (article 1911 of the Civil Code and article 579.1 of the Civil Procedure Act). The law provides for writing off part of that remaining debt only when the property is the debtor's main home (article 579.2).

Documents and checks: what the law requires and what the bank asks for

The law requires the bank to assess whether you will be able to pay, and not to rely mainly on the part of the property's value that exceeds the loan, or on the hope that the property will rise in value (article 11.3 of Law 5/2019). The bank must tell you in advance which documents it needs; it must check your credit history in CIRBE, the Bank of Spain's central credit register, and with one private credit bureau (article 12.1). The cost of that check cannot be passed on to you (article 11.2), and if the bank turns you down, it must tell you in writing and explain why (article 11.6).

The second check comes under the anti-money-laundering law. The bank establishes your identity from your passport or the identity card Spain issues to foreigners (the law's implementing regulation, article 6.1.a) and checks where your money comes from. The regulation lists non-residence among the risk factors the bank weighs when deciding on enhanced checks (article 19.3.a.1º), and under enhanced checks the bank may ask for additional documents showing where your money and assets came from (article 20.1). If the checks cannot be carried out, the bank does not take you on as a customer (article 7.3 of the law). In the September roundup, I said: "A warning sign for those who can't reasonably explain where their money came from. Everyone else essentially has nothing to worry about." Explaining means producing a paper trail.

The specific list is set by the bank. For UK residents, CaixaBank publishes this list:

• passport, NIE (número de identidad de extranjero, Spain's identification number for foreigners), and an application form;
• the last three pay stubs (payslips) and the latest tax return (the SA302 or SA110 calculation, or a P60 or P45 if you do not file one; the self-employed need two years of returns);
• three months of statements for the accounts your income is paid into and your loan repayments are made from;
• proof of where the money for the purchase came from: statements, savings account activity;
• a credit report from your country of residence (the bank names Equifax or Experian) and details of debts in other countries;
• the deposit contract or reservation document for the property.

CaixaBank's published checklist covers UK residents only, and we found no published list for US residents. According to its 2025 guide, the online application shows the documents required for your country of residence and occupation.

Get the NIE first: in Spain it is issued by the police, and from abroad you apply through a Spanish consulate (article 205 of Spain's immigration regulations). How to do this from the US is explained below.

CaixaBank promises to accept documents in the customer's language without translation, and its 2025 guide says that the online application platform is in English and that the contract documents (the FEIN, the FiAE, and annexes) are available in English. In a 2025 video, I told the story of a client from the UK who submitted all his paperwork in English to Santander and was approved without any trouble. Ask which languages your bank accepts before ordering a sworn translation. Income documents, according to hipotecas.me, may need an apostille and a translation. In the US, an apostille on a state-issued document comes from that state's Secretary of State, and on a federal document from the US Department of State (USAGov).

You can apply jointly, for example with your spouse: CaixaBank's buyer's guide says the bank accepts up to three applicants, who need not share a nationality. If you are married, the notary will state your marital property regime in the purchase deed (article 159 of the notarial regulations), and how to hold title to the apartment if you married abroad is a question for the notary before the purchase.

The law gives people legally resident in the European Union, asylum seekers, and people who cannot be deported the right to a basic payment account at a Spanish bank (article 3 of Royal Decree-Law 19/2017). A resident of the UK or the US has no such right, and the bank is not required to open an account for them. Yet in practice a mortgage from a bank requires an account with that bank: CaixaBank requires you to keep that account for the whole term of the loan. So in your first message to the bank, ask whether it will open an account for a non-resident from your country. UCI is not a bank, and its own page says you may find it easier to keep your current bank account. Ask UCI which account it will debit your payments from.

How to get a mortgage in Spain as a foreigner: step by step to signing

The order that leaves the fewest unpleasant surprises is this:

1. Pre-approval. If you do not have an NIE yet, apply for one before this step: CaixaBank includes the NIE in its list of application documents. Before paying a deposit, send the bank your income documents and ask how much it is prepared to lend and at what rate. CaixaBank gives this answer free of charge and states that it usually replies within 72 hours of receiving your documents, but only to online applications from 15 Western European countries, the US, and Canada. Apply to two or three banks at once, as I advised in a 2025 video. Pre-approval commits the bank to nothing: under the law, only the FEIN is binding.
2. The deposit. In the deposit contract, you and the seller agree on the price and the closing date (the completion date, in UK terms), and you pay part of the price. British readers, note: this is not the deposit in the UK mortgage sense; the share of the price you cover yourself is called the down payment here. The law does not set the amount; in practice, as the consumer organization OCU writes, more than 10% of the price is rarely paid.
3. Full application. The documents from the list above, a credit history check, and a check on the origin of your money.
4. Appraisal. An independent appraisal company does it (article 13 of Law 5/2019), and you pay for it; the loan amount depends on the result.
5. FEIN. The bank delivers its offer at least 10 days before signing.
6. Consultation with the notary. It takes place within those 10 days, no later than the day before signing.
7. Signing. A home mortgage is executed as a notarized deed (article 22.1).

The law does not say how long the whole process takes: it sets only a minimum of 10 days between the FEIN and signing. The other timelines come from the consulate, the bank, and the broker, and they are guidelines, not law. A US resident applies for an NIE through the Spanish consulate for their state, and in New York the number takes two to five weeks to arrive (the New York consulate's pages differ). CaixaBank states that it usually replies within 72 hours of receiving your documents, but only to online applications, which it accepts from residents of 15 Western European countries, the US, and Canada. Getting from a complete set of documents to signing takes 3 to 6 weeks in the experience of the mortgage broker hipotecas.me, and the 10 days after the FEIN fall within that period; the broker itself notes that this is neither an official figure nor a guarantee. The exact timeline depends on the bank and the appraiser, so ask your bank for it in writing.

The riskiest stretch is between the second and fifth steps. The deposit is paid before the bank issues its binding offer: CaixaBank even includes the deposit contract in its list of application documents. If the bank refuses or lends less, and the contract has no financing condition, the bank's answer does not release you from the purchase. As a general rule, Spain's Supreme Court treats difficulty in getting a loan as the buyer's risk, unless the seller took that risk on or the parties made the contract conditional on the loan being granted (judgment 447/2017 of July 13, 2017).

What you lose in that case depends on how the deposit contract is drafted. Article 1454 of the Civil Code lets the buyer walk away by forfeiting the deposit, and the seller by paying back double the deposit. But that right must be written into the contract clearly: in the Supreme Court's view, a mere reference to the article is not enough, and without a clear clause the deposit counts as an ordinary partial payment of the price (judgment 583/2018 of October 17, 2018). In that dispute, a buyer who expected to lose only the deposit was ordered to pay the seller the rest of the price.

So before signing the deposit contract, ask for a financing condition: a clause under which the contract ends and the deposit is returned to you in full if the bank does not grant the loan. For example: "If, by December 15, the buyer has not obtained mortgage approval for at least €140,000 and shows the seller the bank's written answer, the contract ends and the seller returns the deposit in full." Once the contract is signed, the seller has no reason to accept such a condition. Have a Spanish lawyer draft the exact wording before you pay the deposit. If the seller will not accept the condition, reduce the risk yourself: have pre-approval in hand by the time you pay the deposit, keep a reserve of your own money in case the appraisal comes in low, and set a closing date that leaves room for the appraisal, the checks, and the 10 days after the FEIN.

Getting help. Our mortgage and finance service requests offers from several banks for you, matched to your income and the property, and compares them side by side. If you have not found a property yet, save this article and come back to it before you start touring homes: the bank's pre-approval is worth having before you start negotiating. You can message us on WhatsApp: +34 664 02 87 80.

Income in pounds or dollars: what the law says and what remains unclear

If you earn in pounds or dollars and borrow in euros, the payment stays in euros but changes in your currency along with the exchange rate. If the euro rises 20% against your currency, the €834 payment from the calculation above will cost you about as much as €1,000 does today.

Article 4.27 of Law 5/2019 defines a "foreign currency loan" as a loan in a currency other than that of the EU country where the borrower lives, or other than the currency in which the borrower earns income or holds the assets used to repay it. For such loans, article 20 gives you the right to convert the debt into the currency of your main income or of the EU country where you live, at the exchange rate on the date of the request. The same article requires the bank to warn you if the debt or the payment deviates by more than 20% from the amount calculated at the exchange rate on the contract date, and requires the FEIN to include an example of a 20% exchange rate swing if the contract does not cap the currency risk below 20%.

Read literally, the definition also covers a euro loan to someone earning in pounds, and the same reading is given by an instruction of December 20, 2019, from the Directorate General of Registries and Notaries at Spain's Ministry of Justice, addressed to notaries and registrars (question 9). Under the instruction, it is enough that, at signing, most of the income or assets you will use to repay the loan are in a currency other than the loan's. The bank determines this at signing, from the information you gave it for the creditworthiness assessment, and a change in the currency of your income after signing does not, on the instruction's reading, create a new right to convert the debt. This is an agency's interpretation, not a court ruling. And part of the mechanics of article 20 is written for a loan not in euros: it measures the 20% deviation by the exchange rate between the loan currency and the euro. We found no court rulings or Bank of Spain guidance on a euro loan with income in another currency, but two banks mention converting such a loan into another currency in their published terms. Bankinter, citing Law 5/2019, states that with income not in euros, the loan is made in euros and can later be converted into the currency of your income if that currency is on the bank's list. CaixaBank states that converting a loan taken out in euros into another currency automatically turns a fixed rate into a variable one. These are two banks' terms, not a general rule, so I will not claim that you definitely have the right to convert the debt into your currency whichever bank you borrow from. Before paying a deposit, ask the bank in writing whether it will treat your loan as a foreign currency loan, and then check the FiAE: if the bank treats the loan as a foreign currency loan, it must say so there (article 14.1.b).

Banks, for their part, do take currency into account, as their terms in the bank table show: CaixaBank keeps its 20-year maximum for pounds and dollars but cuts it to 15 years for income in some other currencies, and Banca March, according to hipotecas.me as of September 2026, lowers the loan-to-value from 70% to 60% for income in another currency. Bankinter does not publish which currencies are on its conversion list, so if you earn in dollars, ask whether the dollar is on it.

If you live in the US: what changes

Bank terms, as hipotecas.me notes, depend mainly on your country of residence and the currency of your income. For a US citizen, the passport matters in one respect: FATCA, covered below.

Which lenders. CaixaBank accepts online mortgage applications from residents of the US and usually replies within 72 hours of receiving your documents; it accepts income in US dollars, with a maximum term of 20 years. With dollar income, its 2025 buyer's guide offers a choice between a fixed rate in dollars and a variable rate in euros that you can convert once into dollars. The rates and payment examples earlier in this article are for income in euros, so for the dollar options ask the bank for its rate and a sample payment before you compare. For the other lenders in the bank table we found no published statement about US residents, one way or the other. So before paying a deposit, write to two or three of them and ask: whether they will consider an application from someone who lives in the US and is a US person for tax purposes; what loan-to-value and term they would offer for income in dollars (Banca March, according to hipotecas.me, lowers the loan-to-value from 70% to 60% for income in another currency); how they will assess your income and which US documents they accept in place of Spanish pay stubs; whether they will open an account for you; and whether the whole process can be done without traveling to Spain. Until a lender has confirmed in writing that it will consider your application, do not pay a deposit. If none of them will, plan the purchase without a Spanish mortgage, with your own savings or financing arranged in the US, or come back to the mortgage after you move to Spain.

The account. CaixaBank requires you to keep an account with it for the whole term of the loan. Its page on opening the HolaBank account online says the online service is available to nationals and residents of 18 countries, among them Canada and the UK; the US is not on that list. The 2025 guide describes other routes: in person at a branch in Spain, or through a representative in Spain with a power of attorney, an official Spanish translation, and an official stamp (the guide does not say which; ask the bank). The bank's pages do not say how a US resident gets the account that the mortgage requires, so ask before you apply.

FATCA. Under the 2013 agreement between Spain and the United States, a Spanish bank identifies the accounts held by US persons, meaning US citizens and US resident individuals (article 1.1.ff), and reports them every year to Spain's tax agency, which passes the data to the IRS (articles 2 and 4). What is reported includes your name, address, and US taxpayer identification number, the account number, the year-end balance, and, for a deposit account, the interest paid (article 2.2.a); Spain's tax agency confirms that banks file this on its Form 290. So expect the lender to ask for your US taxpayer ID. The agreement tells banks what to identify and report; we found nothing in it about whom a bank must accept or refuse. The broker hipotecas.me warns that a bank may decline US clients because of this reporting, and we found no policy on US persons published by the lenders in the table, so the written question above matters.

Your own reporting. The bank's report does not replace yours. If the combined value of your foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any time in the calendar year, a US person files an FBAR (FinCEN Form 114) electronically with FinCEN, due April 15 with an automatic extension to October 15 (IRS); the account you hold with the lender counts. Depending on where you live and your filing status, you may also have to attach IRS Form 8938 to your return. For an unmarried person living in the US, the thresholds are more than $50,000 on the last day of the year or more than $75,000 at any time; for a married couple filing jointly, $100,000 and $150,000; they are higher for US taxpayers living abroad. The IRS comparison of the two forms says that foreign real estate held directly is reported on neither one, but real estate held through a foreign entity is not ignored: the entity itself is an asset for Form 8938. Ask a US tax adviser how both forms apply to you.

Sending money. A bank transfer from your US account to Spain is not covered by the US cash-reporting rules. US financial institutions, banks among them, report transactions in currency, meaning coins and paper money, of more than $10,000 (31 CFR 1010.311), and anyone who physically carries or ships more than $10,000 in currency or monetary instruments across the US border files FinCEN Form 105; but FinCEN's instructions for that form say that a transfer through normal banking procedures, without physical transportation of currency or monetary instruments, is not required to be reported. So send the down payment by bank transfer, not as cash, and keep the statements: the Spanish bank will ask where the money came from (see the section on documents and checks). We found no US rule that caps or requires approval for sending your own money abroad by bank transfer.

A US resident can get an NIE without leaving the country. You apply through the Spanish consulate for your state (most require an appointment, so check its page), either yourself or through a representative with a power of attorney that expressly authorizes them to apply for the NIE; in both cases someone has to appear at the consulate in person. Spain has consulates general in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and San Juan (Puerto Rico), and a consular section at its embassy in Washington, each covering its own states. At the New York consulate, which covers New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, you submit Form EX-15, Form 790 (code 12), and proof that you live in its jurisdiction, and the $12 fee is paid at the appointment with a USPS money order; the number arrives by email, and the New York consulate's pages give different estimates of the wait, from about two weeks (its Spanish page) to five weeks (its English page). Other consulates may have different rules, so check the one for your state.

If you will not travel to Spain for the notary consultation and the signing, you will need a power of attorney. From the US there are three ways to execute one. First, you can sign it at the Spanish consulate, where the consul acts as a Spanish notary (New York consulate): at New York you email the request form and your documents to book an appointment, then sign in person with your original ID (ask the consulate how the fee is paid), and if you do not understand Spanish you must bring an interpreter at your expense, unless the consul speaks your language. Second, you can sign it before a US notary: according to the same consulate, a document signed before a notary outside Spain can have effect in Spain if it is apostilled (or legalized) and accompanied by an official Spanish translation where required. The apostille is issued by the US authorities, not by the consulate: for a document signed before a state notary it comes from that state's Secretary of State (USAGov). Ask the Spanish notary in advance whether the document will be accepted. Third, according to the consulate, a power of attorney limited to specific acts (not a general one) can be executed without appearing in person, by video call with a notary of your choice anywhere in Spain, through the notaries' online portal, the Portal Notarial del Ciudadano; for this you need a digital certificate valid in Spain, which you can obtain through the same portal. A general power of attorney cannot be executed this way, and the mortgage signing and the consultation with the notary are not on the list of acts the law allows to be carried out by video call (article 17 ter of the Notarial Act), and the New York consulate lists mortgages among the acts that cannot be done this way. Whether a power of attorney signed by video call is enough for your representative to sign the mortgage is for the Spanish notary and the bank to confirm, so ask them before choosing this route. The power to mortgage the property must be stated expressly in the power of attorney (article 1713 of the Civil Code). Ask the bank in advance whether it will accept a representative signing the mortgage.

The mortgage and non-resident tax

While the apartment stands empty or you use it yourself, as a non-resident you pay tax in Spain every year on imputed income from it. The base is 1.1% of the cadastral value (valor catastral, the official value assigned to the property for tax purposes) if your municipality has revised that value and the new value took effect in the current year or in the previous 10 years, and 2% in all other cases. As Spain's tax agency writes in its instructions for Form 210, no expenses, including mortgage interest, can be deducted from this base. The tax rate is 24%, or 19% for residents of the EU, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein (article 25.1.a of the non-resident income tax act); since Brexit, UK residents pay the 24% rate. With a cadastral value of €100,000 and a 2% base, a resident of the UK or the US will pay €480 a year. The 1990 tax treaty between the US and Spain, amended by a protocol in force since November 27, 2019, leaves Spain the right to tax income from real estate located in Spain (article 6), and under article 24.2 the US allows its citizens and residents a credit for income tax paid in Spain, within the limits of US law. For an apartment that stands empty or that you use yourself you have no US income from it, so the Spanish tax on imputed income has no US tax to offset, and we found no IRS guidance saying it can be credited or deducted; ask a US tax adviser. Our article on non-resident property tax explains this in more detail.

If you rent the apartment out, only residents of other EU and European Economic Area countries can deduct expenses, including mortgage interest, from the rental income (article 24.6), and the interest is deductible only up to the income from that rental. A resident of the UK or the US pays tax on the gross rent with no deductions (article 24.1), at the same 24% rate. The IRS describes the foreign tax credit, claimed on Form 1116, as relief where foreign-source income is taxed by both countries, and says that instead of the credit you can choose to deduct foreign income taxes. Ask a US tax adviser which one fits your return.

What to do next

Three things are worth doing before you pay a deposit, and the first two preferably before you even start looking at apartments.

If you live in the US, settle two questions from the section on the US before these three steps: whether at least one lender will accept a US person, and how the account the lender requires will be opened for you. Until both answers are in writing, do not pay a deposit. Talk to a US tax adviser about the FBAR and, if the thresholds apply, Form 8938 before you open a Spanish account.

First, calculate the payment at today's rate and at a rate one and two points higher. If it exceeds 30–35% of your net income, borrow less or look at cheaper properties.

Second, gather proof of your income and of where your money came from, and get pre-approval from at least two banks. If your income is not in euros, ask in writing how the bank treats it.

Third, agree on the financing condition (the deposit is returned if the bank does not grant the loan) with the seller before paying the deposit, not after.

Our mortgage and finance page explains how we request offers from several banks at once and lay them side by side, instead of handing you a single ready-made option. If you want to discuss your case, message us on WhatsApp: +34 664 02 87 80.

Videos on this topic

Two related videos, both in Russian. On rising Euribor, the payment on a variable-rate mortgage, and the origin of funds: New rules on money controls: what is happening and how it will affect you (September 8, 2026). Real cases and what banks require from non-residents: Spanish mortgage 2025: how to buy an apartment and earn from renting it out; the figures in this video are from 2025 and out of date.

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