Tourism Licence

The original law that related to licences for Holiday lets for properties in Spain (which originally only really related to own­ers op­er­at­ing as a business previously) has been modified.

Now it is ob­lig­at­ory for all owners letting out properties as Holiday lets with no official agent to apply for a tourist licence in every Region of Spain, though each region operates slightly different. At present, we can only provide this service in the southern Costa Blanca, but hope to expand it over time.

Our partner provider recently received this email:-

“I have an apart­ment in Playa Fla­menca and would like to in­quire about what is needed for a tour­ist li­cence. I would need to let it out oc­ca­sion­ally. The apart­ment is ap­prox­im­ately 12 years old. I use it and also let my fam­ily use it. Your name was given to me by a friend. If you would be able to help me that would be most help­ful.”

This was our re­sponse:-

“When you rent out your prop­erty short term it is now com­puls­ory to re­gister your prop­erty at the Tour­ist of­fice, this is called a Tour­ism li­cence, and it takes about three months to get the re­gis­tra­tion num­ber by post in this area.

We can ad­vise the cost of this.

A form is required from your local town hall which confirms that the property is suitable as a holiday rental. You complete this and return it with the appropriate fee to the town hall and they will then confirm if it is or not.

A form must be filed at the tourist office which deals with this (ours is in Alic­ante City), then the client must register at the police Station to get a username and pass­word to enter the data (name and pass­port) for every guest they have at the prop­erty.

Please note that a De­clar­a­tion of Second Oc­cu­pa­tion is re­quired. The Hab­it­a­tion cer­ti­fic­ate should have been delivered by the builder when a prop­erty was pur­chased, or when you bought the prop­erty if a re­sale (cer­tainly nowadays this al­ways hap­pens). It is valid for 10 years, but some­times it is is­sued some years after the house is sold. If a cli­ent can­not find it or if it is ex­pired a new one is ne­ces­sary. We can quote for the cost of the full pro­cess, with Town hall taxes and VAT in­cluded, and for the tour­ism li­cence.

An ar­chi­tect has to visit the house to take pic­tures and meas­ure­ments to make the plans. We then send a form to sign and you send it back to us by re­gistered post, be­cause an ori­ginal sig­na­ture is re­quired.

Once you have your licence you will also require a plaque which is fitted to the property to confirm its registration.

You will require a form to complete and take to the local Police station to register online so you can register all visitors to the property

Fi­nally, the cli­ent needs to pay a tax on their rental in­come of 19% per an­num (but this changes every year). An account­ant will deal with this tax directly. You do not need to worry about your friends and fam­ily using the property”.

So as you can see, the law is chan­ging and if someone is only rent­ing out their prop­erty very oc­ca­sion­ally, the cost of do­ing all this leg­ally is pro­hib­it­ive. The ad­vant­age if your prop­erty is get­ting enough let­tings is that you are legal and can ad­vert­ise to get book­ings safely and without risk. The cons are that is ex­pens­ive to sort, com­plic­ated, with a num­ber of steps such as gath­er­ing the in­form­a­tion, re­cord­ing with the po­lice, pay­ing taxes, and we can only ass­ist with a couple of these ele­ments (hab­it­a­tion cer­ti­fic­ates for ex­ample and the li­cence).

We are post­ing this art­icle so that cli­ents are aware of this in­form­a­tion.

It really de­pends on how many book­ings you are get­ting/​likely to get per year. Do not for­get that if you are not using your prop­erty at all, then there are other op­tions such as long-term rent­als or even con­sid­er­ing pla­cing the prop­erty on the mar­ket for sale.

As a fi­nal note, I am ad­vised that in some re­gions, the gov­ern­ment have star­ted a pro­gramme to check each prop­erty for ren­ted prop­er­ties with the po­lice go­ing door to door to check if the prop­erty is be­ing let and there is a licence.

We have also heard that Tor­re­vieja area is pro­posed to be one of those areas soon.