What will a buyer’s lawyer ask for first?

The nota simple, almost always, because it settles ownership and charges on one page and it arrives in minutes. After that: the deed you bought with, the licence position for anything built or altered, the registered energy certificate, the last property-tax receipt, and the community’s certificate of debt if there is a community. A seller who produces those six unprompted changes the tone of the transaction, because the lawyer’s job stops being discovery and starts being conveyancing.

Do I need an energy certificate before I advertise?

Yes. Real Decreto 390/2021 requires a certificate for an existing dwelling that is sold and requires the energy rating to be included in any published information about that sale, so the obligation bites before the first photograph goes up rather than at the notary. It also has to be registered and not merely issued by a technician: the decree makes registration the condition of the certificate’s legal validity. A copy of the registered certificate and its label is then annexed to the contract.

What if part of the house was built without a licence?

It becomes the sale’s central question rather than a footnote. In Andalusia, Ley 7/2021 makes the municipality the licensing authority and offers a route, asimilado a fuera de ordenación, for buildings completed without a licence so long ago that the town hall can no longer act against them. That route recognises the building and allows it to be conserved; it does not authorise extension and it is not a licence. Establish which of the three positions you are in before you set a price, because each attracts a different buyer.

Who issues the community debt certificate, and how quickly?

Whoever exercises the secretary’s functions in the community, with the president’s approval. The Ley de Propiedad Horizontal gives them a maximum of seven days from the request and makes both answerable for the accuracy of the document and for damage caused by delay. The transferor must produce it and its content has to coincide with what he has declared. An acquirer is entitled to exempt him expressly, but a buyer’s lawyer rarely advises it, and the seller has no interest in that exemption either.

Which document does the plusvalía calculation start from?

The deed you bought with. The town hall needs the acquisition value and the acquisition date before it can run either route to the base, so a seller who cannot find his own escritura de compra delays his own filing. The tax is settled with the ayuntamiento rather than with the state, on that ayuntamiento’s deadlines, and filing late attracts its surcharge. Your lawyer files it. Your one job is to have produced the deed before the notary date, not after it.

How does selling as a non-resident change things?

Mechanically rather than commercially. The non-resident income tax law obliges the acquirer to retain an amount on account of your tax and pay it in, and it leaves the property itself answerable for the sum if he fails to. That is a payment on account, not a settlement: you then declare the transfer yourself and either pay the balance or reclaim the excess. Budget the calendar and not only the amount, because the money leaves at the notary and returns, if it returns, considerably later.

Can I withdraw after signing the arras contract?

Usually yes, at a price the contract has already set. The Código Civil’s default for a señal given on a sale is that the buyer who withdraws forfeits it and the seller who withdraws returns it doubled, but the arras is a contract and the parties frequently write something else into it, up to a firm obligation to complete. Read which kind you are signing before you sign it. Anything you promise to repair, remove or regularise belongs in that same document, because nothing verbal reaches the escritura.

Am I still liable after the deed is signed?

For hidden defects, yes. The Código Civil’s saneamiento por vicios ocultos keeps a seller answerable for defects that were not apparent at the sale and that make the property unfit for its purpose or materially reduce its use. The practical consequence is counter-intuitive: disclosure protects the seller. A defect written into the contract and priced into the deal is closed; the same defect found a year later by the new owner’s builder is a dispute, and property disputes in Spain are slow and expensive.

— SERVICE

Selling your property

Selling on the Costa del Sol is a documentary exercise before it is a commercial one. Spanish law asks a seller for a specific file — title, licence history, energy certificate, community position — and a buyer’s lawyer reads it before price is discussed. Sell-side representation is the work of assembling that file, then pricing what it shows.

Property owners on the Costa del Sol

How a sale runs, and what the file has to contain

Everything starts at the Registro de la Propiedad, because that is where the buyer’s lawyer starts. A nota simple sets out who owns the property, what is described as owned, and what is charged against it: mortgage, embargo, easement, an unreleased loan from an owner two transactions ago. Article 38 of the Ley Hipotecaria presumes that a registered right exists as the entry describes it, and article 34 maintains the buyer who acquires in good faith and for value from the person the register shows as entitled. So the seller’s first job is to read his own entry as a stranger would. An old charge nobody ever cancelled is not an administrative detail — it is the reason a completion date moves.

The second file is the licence history, and in Andalusia it sits with the town hall under a planning law of the region’s own: Ley 7/2021, the LISTA, in force as at 27 August 2026. It makes the municipality the authority that grants urban licences, lets lighter works proceed on a declaración responsable, and recognises a category of its own, asimilado a fuera de ordenación, for buildings finished without a licence long enough ago that the disciplinary power has lapsed. Recognition is not regularisation: such a building may be conserved, not extended. Every closed terrace, converted basement, added bathroom and pool has to be traceable to a permission or to that regime, because the question will be asked, and "it was like that when we bought" is not an answer.

Then the two descriptions of the property have to agree. The Catastro is a register of its own, administrative and kept by the Ministerio de Hacienda, and the consolidated Ley del Catastro Inmobiliario says in terms that it works without prejudice to the competences of the Registro de la Propiedad. Two records, two purposes, no automatic synchronisation between them. The referencia catastral has to appear in documents of economic or tax significance attached to the property, and the certificación catastral descriptiva y gráfica is incorporated into the public deed. Where the built surface on one record is not the built surface on the other, that gap gets explained before somebody finds it. Usually it is the extension from the paragraph above, wearing a different coat.

The certificado de eficiencia energética is the item sellers most often treat as a formality and most often get wrong. Real Decreto 390/2021, the procedure in force as at 27 August 2026, requires one for an existing dwelling that is sold, and it is explicit on three things that matter in practice: the certificate has legal validity only once it is duly registered, the energy rating has to be included in any published information about that sale, and a copy of the registered certificate together with its label is annexed to the contract. Issued but not registered is the standard failure. It is the cheapest defect on this page to cure, and the most irritating to meet in the week of signing.

If the property sits in a community of owners, the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal puts one specific document in the seller’s hands. Article 9.1.e requires the transferor to produce a certificate of the state of his debts with the community, matching what he has himself declared. It is issued by whoever exercises the secretary’s functions, with the president’s approval, within a maximum of seven days of the request, and both of them answer for its accuracy and for damage caused by delay. An acquirer may expressly exempt the seller from providing it. The figure on the certificate is not the whole position either: a derrama approved but not yet called is a liability a careful buyer will want allocated in writing.

Only then does the commercial part begin, and it ends in two documents. The arras contract fixes price, completion date and what follows if either side walks away. The Código Civil’s default for a señal given on a sale is that the buyer who withdraws forfeits it and the seller who withdraws returns it doubled, which is why the sums and the deadlines in that contract deserve more attention than the brochure ever got. The escritura is then signed before a notary and the sale is done. Signing does not exhaust the seller’s exposure: saneamiento por vicios ocultos keeps him answerable for hidden defects that make the property unfit for its use. Written disclosure costs less than the alternative.

What comes off the price, and who sets each number

There are no figures on this page, and that is deliberate. Every number in a Spanish sale is set by an authority or by a contract, and a number quoted away from its context is exactly how a seller ends up budgeting for a different sale than the one he is in. What can be described is the shape of the deduction. The principal municipal item is the plusvalía municipal, a tax on the rise in the value of the land between your acquisition and your transfer, charged by the town hall and not by the state. Since Real Decreto-ley 26/2021 the taxable base can be reached two ways: objectively, from the land value and a coefficient for how long you held it, or from the real increment between the two deeds. The taxpayer may take the lower. Where no increase is established, nothing is levied.

The second structural item applies only if you are not tax-resident in Spain. Under the non-resident income tax law the buyer of property from a non-resident seller must retain an amount on account of that seller’s tax and pay it in; if he does not, the property itself answers for the debt, which is why no competent buyer’s lawyer will agree to skip the step. The retention is a payment on account and not a settlement: the seller then declares the transfer himself and either pays the balance or reclaims the excess. What needs budgeting here is the calendar, not the arithmetic — the money leaves at the notary and comes back, if it comes back, considerably later.

The rest of the stack is contractual rather than statutory. What an agency charges is whatever the mandate you sign says it charges, so read what event triggers the fee as carefully as you read the fee. Your own lawyer is engaged by you. Who bears the notary and registry costs falls to the Código Civil in the absence of agreement and is very often re-allocated by the contract instead. And there is one cost that appears on nobody’s list: the discount a buyer takes for a defect he found and you did not. Every hour spent on the file before the property is advertised is spent against that number.

GUIDE An indication of where this area sits, not a valuation of any particular home. Ask Paula for a figure you can act on.

What is national, what is Andalusian, and what the town hall decides

Most of what governs a Spanish sale is national and does not change as you drive along the coast. The Registro de la Propiedad works the same way in every province. The Código Civil governs the arras, the transfer and the seller’s liability for hidden defects everywhere. The retention on a non-resident seller is a state tax with one mechanism. The Ley de Propiedad Horizontal imposes the same certificate obligation on every community of owners in the country. Real Decreto 390/2021 sets a single basic procedure for the energy certificate. If a page tells you that these things work differently in one town than in another, it is selling you something.

One layer above that, Andalusia has a territorial law of its own. Ley 7/2021, the LISTA, decides which works needed a licence, which could proceed on a declaración responsable, and how a building finished without a licence is treated once the power to act against it has lapsed. The register in which an energy certificate has to be lodged in order to be valid is the autonomous community’s, not the state’s. Technical building-inspection regimes are set at this level too. So the answer to "is my closed terrace a problem" is an Andalusian answer rather than a Spanish one, and the file it needs is an Andalusian file.

Then the municipal layer, which is where the timetable actually lives. The plusvalía is settled with the ayuntamiento, under its own ordinance, through its own sede electrónica, on its own deadlines and with its own surcharge for filing late. The licence archive is municipal, and how quickly a town hall produces a forty-year-old file varies enormously. The tax on the property itself, the refuse charge and any outstanding municipal debt are cleared locally. That is the layer this page hands to the area pages: pick the municipality where the property sits from the list below, and read the local half of the answer there.

Where this applies

41 areas

The areas where Paula covers this, grouped west to east. An area that is not listed is one we do not claim to cover for this question.

Marbella

Estepona

Benahavís

Mijas

Sotogrande

Fuengirola – Nerja

Questions

What will a buyer’s lawyer ask for first?: The nota simple, almost always, because it settles ownership and charges on one page and it arrives in minutes. After that: the deed you bought with, the licence position for anything built or altered, the registered energy certificate, the last property-tax receipt, and the community’s certificate of debt if there is a community. A seller who produces those six unprompted changes the tone of the transaction, because the lawyer’s job stops being discovery and starts being conveyancing.
Do I need an energy certificate before I advertise?: Yes. Real Decreto 390/2021 requires a certificate for an existing dwelling that is sold and requires the energy rating to be included in any published information about that sale, so the obligation bites before the first photograph goes up rather than at the notary. It also has to be registered and not merely issued by a technician: the decree makes registration the condition of the certificate’s legal validity. A copy of the registered certificate and its label is then annexed to the contract.
What if part of the house was built without a licence?: It becomes the sale’s central question rather than a footnote. In Andalusia, Ley 7/2021 makes the municipality the licensing authority and offers a route, asimilado a fuera de ordenación, for buildings completed without a licence so long ago that the town hall can no longer act against them. That route recognises the building and allows it to be conserved; it does not authorise extension and it is not a licence. Establish which of the three positions you are in before you set a price, because each attracts a different buyer.
Who issues the community debt certificate, and how quickly?: Whoever exercises the secretary’s functions in the community, with the president’s approval. The Ley de Propiedad Horizontal gives them a maximum of seven days from the request and makes both answerable for the accuracy of the document and for damage caused by delay. The transferor must produce it and its content has to coincide with what he has declared. An acquirer is entitled to exempt him expressly, but a buyer’s lawyer rarely advises it, and the seller has no interest in that exemption either.
Which document does the plusvalía calculation start from?: The deed you bought with. The town hall needs the acquisition value and the acquisition date before it can run either route to the base, so a seller who cannot find his own escritura de compra delays his own filing. The tax is settled with the ayuntamiento rather than with the state, on that ayuntamiento’s deadlines, and filing late attracts its surcharge. Your lawyer files it. Your one job is to have produced the deed before the notary date, not after it.
How does selling as a non-resident change things?: Mechanically rather than commercially. The non-resident income tax law obliges the acquirer to retain an amount on account of your tax and pay it in, and it leaves the property itself answerable for the sum if he fails to. That is a payment on account, not a settlement: you then declare the transfer yourself and either pay the balance or reclaim the excess. Budget the calendar and not only the amount, because the money leaves at the notary and returns, if it returns, considerably later.
Can I withdraw after signing the arras contract?: Usually yes, at a price the contract has already set. The Código Civil’s default for a señal given on a sale is that the buyer who withdraws forfeits it and the seller who withdraws returns it doubled, but the arras is a contract and the parties frequently write something else into it, up to a firm obligation to complete. Read which kind you are signing before you sign it. Anything you promise to repair, remove or regularise belongs in that same document, because nothing verbal reaches the escritura.
Am I still liable after the deed is signed?: For hidden defects, yes. The Código Civil’s saneamiento por vicios ocultos keeps a seller answerable for defects that were not apparent at the sale and that make the property unfit for its purpose or materially reduce its use. The practical consequence is counter-intuitive: disclosure protects the seller. A defect written into the contract and priced into the deal is closed; the same defect found a year later by the new owner’s builder is a dispute, and property disputes in Spain are slow and expensive.

Other things Paula handles

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