Puerto Banús · Legal & mortgage support
Legal ground six metres from the water in Puerto Banús
Buying beside the Banús quays adds a layer most Spanish purchases never meet. The port is a private concession whose official name is El Puerto José Banús, the shore in front of it is state maritime domain under Ley 22/1988, and only the blocks behind that line are freehold you can own.
- Municipality
- Marbella
- Province
- Málaga
- Part of
- Marbella
Start with the line the state draws. Ley 22/1988 lays a servidumbre de tránsito of six metres along the landward edge of the shore, and behind it a servidumbre de protección — a hundred metres as the rule, cut to twenty on ground already urbanised when the law arrived. The port opened in 1970, so the narrow band is what applies around it, and it still binds. What may be built, enclosed or fenced inside that strip is settled by the coastal administration rather than by the town hall, and a ground-floor terrace or a pool between a block and the sand is exactly what runs into it.
The second line is the concession. El Puerto José Banús is a private concession over roughly fifteen hectares, which means the quays, the berths and the shopping gallery are held under a permission to use public property rather than owned outright. Your flat behind them is ordinary freehold under horizontal division, and a contract that blurs the two is a contract to walk away from. A berth changes hands under the port's own rules and with the port's consent; a Spanish lender will secure a loan on the apartment and never on the water. Trace every item in the offer back to whichever of the two titles actually carries it.
National law, Andalusian tax, and two authorities at the water
Three of the layers over a Banús flat are the ordinary Spanish ones. The contract, the escritura, the Registro de la Propiedad and the mortgage rules are national, and behave identically in Bilbao. The transfer taxes are Andalusian — ITP on a resale, IVA with the stamp duty AJD on a new build — and they move when the regional parliament decides they move, which is why a rate quoted in an article is worth nothing to you. The Ayuntamiento de Marbella licenses works, issues the licencia de primera ocupación, bills the annual IBI and settles the plusvalía municipal on a sale.
The fourth layer is the one buyers miss. Everything seaward of the line drawn by Ley 22/1988 is dominio público marítimo-terrestre, run by the state coastal service, and the servidumbres reaching inland from it bind private plots without appearing in any brochure. Banús then adds something that is not an administration at all: the port is a concession holder, and its own rules govern the berths, the gallery and the quays your terrace looks at. Neither answer can be obtained from the town hall, and both are worth having before the arras.
| Official port name and status | The port's official name is El Puerto José Banús; it is operated as a private concession over some 15 hectares. 2026-08-26 |
|---|---|
| Transit easement | Article 27.1 of Ley 22/1988 places a servidumbre de tránsito over a six-metre strip measured inland from the inner limit of the shore. 2026-08-26 |
| Protection easement | Article 23.1 sets the servidumbre de protección at 100 metres inland from the shore; the law's transitional provision reduces it to 20 metres on land already urbanised when it came into force. 2026-08-26 |
| Public access to the sea | Article 28.1 imposes a servidumbre of free public access to the sea over land adjoining the maritime-terrestrial public domain. 2026-08-26 |
How this runs, step by step
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Step 1
Establish which title you are buying
Specific to Marbella
Three different kinds of right sit within a hundred metres of each other here. The apartment is freehold, held as a unit under horizontal division. A berth is a right of use inside a private concession over roughly fifteen hectares. A gallery unit is something else again. Ask your lawyer to name in writing which of the three each item in the offer belongs to, before any money moves.
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Step 2
Get the NIE and the funds moving
The NIE is the foreigner's Spanish tax number and nothing signs without it, so the appointment is the first thing to book rather than the last. A Spanish account and evidence of where the money came from belong in the same week. None of this is local to Banús, but the port sells quickly in spring and a buyer without a number is a buyer who loses the flat.
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Step 3
Ask the coastal question early
Specific to Marbella
For anything on the front line, and for every ground floor, the question is where the servidumbres fall on this particular parcel. Article 27 sets the six-metre transit strip and article 28 keeps public access to the sea open across neighbouring land. Both are answered by the coastal administration, both take time, and both are cheaper to ask about now than to discover after an enclosed terrace has been paid for.
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Step 4
Match the deed to the footprint
Blocks around the quays have been altered for fifty years: terraces glazed in, kitchens moved, two units joined. Where the Registro and the Catastro describe something the flat no longer is, the difference has to be regularised by somebody, and the negotiation about who does it belongs before the deposit rather than after completion. Measure the flat against its own description on the first visit.
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Step 5
Open the file with the valuer in mind
Specific to Marbella
A Spanish lender assesses the borrower and the property separately, and here the property half is the slow one. The valuer prices a fifty-year-old seafront unit, discounts anything undeclared, and will not attribute value to a berth at all. Give the bank the registry position and the community's works history rather than letting it find them, and start the file before the arras rather than beside it.
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Step 6
Arras, notary and what settles afterwards
Arras penitenciales fixes what each side loses if the deal fails, so an unresolved coastal answer or an outstanding mortgage offer belongs in it as a dated condition. The escritura is then signed before a notary, who serves neither party. Afterwards the transfer tax is filed, the flat is registered, and the plusvalía municipal is settled with the Ayuntamiento de Marbella by the seller.
Some of what you pay is set by statute and some of it is argued. Fixed: the Andalusian transfer tax on a resale, IVA with AJD on a new build, the notary's tariff, the Registro's fee, and the plusvalía municipal on the seller's side. Negotiable: your own lawyer, the survey, the agency arrangement, and who carries the cost of regularising a terrace enclosed decades ago without a licence. On a fifty-year-old seafront block that last item is the live one, and beside it sits a question no other Marbella address raises — whether a berth is in the deal at all, and on whose paper.
GUIDE An indication of where this area sits, not a valuation of any particular home. Ask Paula for a figure you can act on.
Questions about this in Puerto Banús
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Can I enclose a seafront terrace on a Banús block?
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Three consents stand between you and that glazing, and they are not interchangeable. The comunidad votes on any change to the building's exterior, because the façade is common property. The Ayuntamiento de Marbella licenses the work. And where the terrace falls inside the coastal servidumbres set by Ley 22/1988, the coastal administration has a say the town hall cannot substitute. Owners who glazed a terrace in the 1980s often did none of this, which is why the registry description and the flat in front of you so often disagree.
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Which administration answers a question about the shoreline?
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Not the one most buyers ask. The shore itself and the strip of servidumbres reaching inland from it are state maritime-terrestrial public domain under Ley 22/1988, administered by the coastal service, so a question about what may stand there is answered there. The Ayuntamiento de Marbella still licenses the building work, and the port's concession still governs the quays and the berths. Three separate answers on three separate timetables — which is why a lawyer used to inland conveyancing will underestimate this purchase.
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What does a lender's valuer look for in these blocks?
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Three things, in this order. Whether the flat matches its registry and cadastral description, because a glazed terrace or a joined unit that exists only in reality is stripped out of the figure. The state of the block, since a fifty-year-old seafront building with façade or waterproofing work pending carries a liability the valuer can read in the minutes. And the parking, because a titled space and a used space are not the same asset. A berth contributes nothing to the valuation at all.
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