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This free sample contains the full list of contents, the introduction and Chapter 6, What Buying Really Costs, including the worked example. Rules as in force in October 2026.
Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 — Before You Start
- Chapter 2 — Choosing Your Area
- Chapter 3 — The Buying Process, Step by Step
- Chapter 4 — The Legal Checks
- Chapter 5 — Renovating and Building Work
- Chapter 6 — What Buying Really Costs
- Chapter 7 — Financing Your Purchase
- Chapter 8 — The Yearly Cost of Owning
- Chapter 9 — Renting Out Your Home
- Chapter 10 — Selling Your Home
- Chapter 11 — Leaving Your Home to Your Children
- Chapter 12 — Making the Move: Becoming Resident
- Chapter 13 — Country Annex: Your Taxes at Home
- Chapter 14 — Four Owners, Start to Finish
- Appendix — Scenarios Compared
- Useful Official Resources
- Glossary of Spanish Terms
- Your Free Calculator
Introduction
This book is for anyone who lives outside Spain and is thinking of buying a home on the Costa del Sol, the coast of the province of Málaga, from Manilva and Estepona in the west, through Marbella, Fuengirola and Málaga city, to Nerja in the east, together with the hill towns just inland. It follows the life of a property in the order you will meet each question, from the paperwork you need before you start looking, through the purchase, owning and letting the home, to selling it or leaving it to your children.
Most guides to buying in Spain are written for residents, or for Spain as a whole. The Costa del Sol belongs to Andalusia, which has its own taxes, its own tourist letting rules and its own planning law, and many of the tax breaks you will read about do not apply to non-residents. This book is about that combination: a non-resident buyer and a home on the Costa del Sol.
Three things make it different:
Figures you can check. Every tax rate and threshold is taken from official Spanish sources where possible, and the book tells you when a figure is an estimate or a market practice rather than a rule.
Worked examples. Most chapters follow the same €450,000 townhouse in Mijas Costa through the numbers, so you can see what each cost looks like in practice, and Chapter 14 follows four typical owners through buying, letting, moving, selling and inheriting.
Your country as well as Spain. Chapter 13 explains how the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, the United States and Ireland tax the same home, because Spanish tax is only half the story.
An appendix at the end compares the main choices side by side: cash or mortgage, letting or not, selling, inheriting, and staying non-resident or moving to Spain.
How current is it? The book reflects the rules in force in October 2026. Andalusia’s purchase, inheritance and wealth taxes have been stable since a series of cuts between 2019 and 2024, but tourist letting rules are changing town by town, Málaga city has stopped new holiday lets altogether, and a new Andalusian tourism law, which lapsed when the regional parliament was dissolved in 2026, may return. A Spanish housing decree of October 2026 may change notional income tax from 2027, VAT on short holiday lets, seasonal lets and the municipal gains tax, but it lapses unless parliament confirms it by early November 2026; current status at nonresidentguides.com/rule-changes. Each edition is updated.
What it is not. This book is general information, not legal or tax advice for your situation. Before you sign anything, and before relying on any figure in this book, take advice from an independent Spanish lawyer and, where relevant, a tax adviser in your country of residence. Where the book flags a point as uncertain or likely to change, check the current position before you act.
Chapter 6 — What Buying Really Costs
The 8–9% rule
If you are buying a resale home on the Costa del Sol as a non-resident, budget around 8% to 9% of the price on top of the price itself. Most of that is tax. The notary, the Land Registry and your professionals account for the rest.
That is lower than in much of Mediterranean Spain: Andalusia charges a single 7% transfer tax, against 9% to 11% on the Costa Blanca and 8% to 13% in the Balearic Islands (about €36,500 on a €450,000 home there). It still surprises many buyers from northern Europe, where purchase costs are often lower, and it catches out people who read Spanish property guides written for residents. Several of the tax breaks you will see advertised simply do not apply to you.
Resale homes: transfer tax (ITP)
When you buy a home from a private seller, you pay the Andalusian transfer tax, the Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales, usually shortened to ITP. It is a regional tax, collected by the Andalusian tax agency (Agencia Tributaria de Andalucía), and it is the biggest cost of the purchase.
Andalusia uses a single rate on the whole value, with no bands and no higher rate for expensive property:
| Property value | Rate on the whole value |
|---|---|
| Any value | 7% |
So a €450,000 home pays €31,500 and a €1.2 million villa €84,000. There is no step at €1 million of the kind buyers meet on the Costa Blanca.
Deadline. The tax must be paid within two months of signing the deed, using form 600. In most purchases your lawyer or the notary's gestoría files it for you, but the legal obligation is yours.
The reduced rates are not for you. You will see Andalusian rates of 6% and 3.5% advertised, for homes worth up to €150,000, young buyers, large families and people with disabilities. All of them require the home to become the buyer's main residence. A holiday home owned by a non-resident always pays the standard rate.
The reference value trap
Since January 2022, transfer tax is not always calculated on the price you pay. Spain's property survey office, the Catastro (not to be confused with the Land Registry), assigns every property a valor de referencia, or reference value. The tax is charged on whichever is higher: that reference value or the price in the deed.
If you negotiate a good deal on an old country house and pay less than its reference value, you will be taxed on money you never paid. With prices rising as fast as they have on the Costa del Sol, this happens less often than it used to, but it still catches out buyers of older and rural property. Ask your lawyer to check the property's reference value on the Catastro's online portal before you sign the reservation document; if it is higher than the agreed price, factor the extra tax into your offer.
The reference value matters mainly for resale homes. On a new build bought from a developer, VAT is charged on the contract price, although the stamp duty is charged on the reference value if that is higher.
New builds: VAT and stamp duty
If you buy a newly built home directly from the developer, which is common around Marbella, Estepona and Mijas, you do not pay transfer tax. You pay VAT instead, plus a stamp duty on the deed.
| Tax | Rate |
|---|---|
| VAT (IVA) on a new home, including up to two parking spaces and storage rooms bought with it | 10% |
| Stamp duty (AJD) on the deed | 1.2% |
The VAT is paid to the developer with the price and passed on to the Spanish tax agency. The stamp duty, Actos Jurídicos Documentados or AJD, is an Andalusian tax paid within the same deadline as ITP.
As with transfer tax, there are reduced stamp duty rates for residents buying their main home. They do not apply to a non-resident's holiday home.
A "new" home is only treated as new on its first sale by the developer. If the first owner later sells it to you, you pay transfer tax at the resale rate.
When the seller is also a non-resident
Many sellers on the Costa del Sol are foreigners who do not live in Spain. If yours is one of them, Spanish law makes you, the buyer, responsible for two of the seller's taxes. Neither is an extra cost for you, but both must be deducted from the price and paid on time.
The 3% withholding. You must keep back 3% of the price in the deed and pay it to the Spanish tax agency on the seller's behalf, using form 211, within one month of signing. On a €450,000 home that is €13,500 that goes to the tax agency, not to the seller. The seller later reclaims any excess through their own non-resident tax return.
If you fail to do this, the tax agency can recover the money from the property you have just bought. That is why it must be written into the private contract and reflected in the completion statement from the start.
The municipal gains tax. Every Spanish town hall charges a tax on the increase in land value when a property is sold, the plusvalía municipal. It is the seller's tax, but when the seller is a non-resident individual the law makes the buyer liable to pay it in the seller's place. The deadline is short, 30 working days from the sale, so ask your lawyer to estimate the plusvalía before completion and withhold that amount from the price as well, alongside the 3%.
Notary, Land Registry and professionals
After the taxes, the remaining costs are modest. Notary and Land Registry fees are set by law and are identical everywhere in Spain. Professional fees are not.
Every Spanish property sale is signed before a notary, who checks identities, reads the deed aloud and confirms that taxes and charges are in order. The notary's fee follows an official scale whose rate falls as the price rises, less a general 5% reduction: for a €450,000 home the base fee is about €460, with copies, pages and 21% VAT added on top.
Registering the deed in the Land Registry (Registro de la Propiedad) is what protects your ownership against third parties. Its fee also follows an official scale with the same 5% reduction: about €250 plus VAT for a €450,000 home, and never more than roughly €2,100, however expensive the property.
Your lawyer, gestoría and valuer set their own fees, so ask each of them for a written quote that states whether VAT is included.
If you take a mortgage. Since 2019 the bank pays the notary, Land Registry, gestoría and stamp duty on the mortgage deed. You pay the bank's valuation of the property. Spanish banks usually lend non-residents a lower share of the value than residents, which is covered in Chapter 7.
Worked example: a €450,000 townhouse
A resale townhouse in Mijas Costa bought for €450,000 from a non-resident seller costs about €32,200 in taxes and fees, and requires you to withhold another €13,500 from the price. The example assumes the reference value is below the price and excludes professional fees. The right-hand column shows the same price for a new build bought from a developer.
| Item | Resale (€) | New build (€) |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer tax at 7% | 31,500 | — |
| VAT at 10% | — | 45,000 |
| Stamp duty at 1.2% | — | 5,400 |
| Notary and Land Registry, base fees before VAT and copies | 707 | 707 |
| Total taxes and fees | 32,207 | 51,107 |
| 3% withheld for the seller's tax, if the seller is non-resident (part of the price, not a cost) | 13,500 | — |
Add your lawyer's fee, commonly around 1% of the price plus VAT, or about €5,450 here, and the total comes to around €37,650, about 8.4% of the price. The same home on the Costa Blanca would pay €9,000 more in transfer tax.
Checklist before you sign
Check the Catastro reference value against the agreed price.
Confirm whether the seller is resident in Spain for tax purposes.
If not, write the 3% withholding and the estimated plusvalía into the private contract.
Get written quotes from your lawyer, gestoría and valuer.
Make sure your funds cover the price plus around 8% to 9%, or 12% to 13% for a new build.
Agree who files form 600 and form 211, and diarise the deadlines: two months for form 600, one month for form 211.
End of the sample. The full book continues with financing, the yearly cost of owning, letting, selling, inheritance, becoming resident, how your own country taxes the home and four case studies.
Buying a Home on the Costa del Sol as a Non-Resident (2026–27 edition) covers the whole process, from the first offer to who inherits, with worked examples and deadlines.
© 2026 Jose Santos. Sample shared for reading on this site. General information, not legal or tax advice.