Domosmar - Costa del Sol Property
Costa del Sol property insights, Marbella area guides and buyer advice.
Spanish law requires off-plan advance payments to be protected by bank guarantee or surety insurance from the building licence onwards. Here is what Costa del Sol buyers should actually verify before transferring substantial funds.
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Spanish law requires off-plan advance payments to be protected by bank guarantee or surety insurance from the building licence onwards. Here is what Costa del Sol buyers should actually verify before transferring substantial funds.
A Costa del Sol new-build completion is more than a notary appointment. From first-occupation paperwork and snagging to 10% IVA, 1.2% AJD, mortgage timing and Spain's 1-, 3- and 10-year construction-defect periods, this is what buyers should expect when an off-plan home becomes theirs.
Spain registered 45,907 home mortgages in June 2026, 10.8% more than a year earlier. Fixed-rate loans took 61.7% of the market at an average initial rate of 2.89%. Here is what the shift means for Costa del Sol buyers, especially non-residents.
Marbella had 13,633 homes registered for tourist use in September 2024, yet only about a third of the properties on the official books were actually being marketed on the main booking platforms. In 2026 the national short-let register has been struck down by the Supreme Court, but Andalucía's rules, municipal planning and community approval still matter.
Spain taxes you for a rental income you never collect. Any non-resident who owns a home on the Costa del Sol and leaves it empty for the winter is still deemed, in the eyes of the Spanish tax authority, to be earning money from it — and is taxed accordingly. It is the single most misunderstood cost of ownership, and it is only one line in an annual budget most buyers never see until the year after they complete.
Every non-resident who sells a property in Spain walks out of the notary''s office with less than the agreed price in their account — by law. The buyer is obliged to hold back 3% of the sale figure and pay it straight to the Agencia Tributaria before the seller sees a cent of the balance. On a €1.8 million villa in Nueva Andalucía, that is €54,000 withheld on the day of signing. Selling a Marbella home is, fiscally, nothing like buying one.
A decade ago, a son inheriting a €1.5 million villa in Mijas faced a Spanish inheritance tax bill of €474,260. Under the rules now in force in Andalucía, the same inheritance produces a bill of roughly €4,742 — and if the estate had been worth under €1 million per heir, nothing at all. For the thousands of foreign families who own property between Marbella and Casares, the question of what happens to a Spanish home on death has quietly become one of the most favourable parts of the entire ownership equation. It has also become one of the least understood.
On a €5 million villa in La Zagaleta held by a non-resident, the annual wealth-tax bill in 2026 lands at roughly €22,000 — paid to the Junta de Andalucía rather than to the State in Madrid. Andalucía’s celebrated 100 per cent wealth-tax rebate quietly changed in 2024. Here is what high-net-worth buyers in Marbella, La Zagaleta and Sierra Blanca actually pay under the regime as it stands today.
The waiting room of a notary's office just off Avenida Ricardo Soriano in central Marbella is one of the calmer corners of the town. On a Tuesday morning in May, the air conditioning hums against the heat outside, a stack of property files waits on the reception desk, and a couple in their fifties are turning the pages of a thick document a bank handed them ten days earlier. They are not buying anything today, and they are not signing anything either. This is the acta previa — the appointment where a notary confirms, clause by clause, that they understand the mortgage they are about to take on.
The notaría on Calle Ramón y Cajal in Marbella's old town is busy by nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning. In forty minutes, a Belgian couple will sign an escritura pública transferring ownership of a three-bedroom villa in El Rosario. The price is agreed, the mortgage is in place — but what they are reviewing one last time is a line-by-line breakdown of every euro owed to the Spanish state, the notary, the land registry, and their legal team before the property becomes truly theirs.