Spain

• Housing: in full ownership, in one's own name; a company may also buy.
• Protected and border zones: permission from the Ministry of Defence for non-EU citizens. According to the record on the Canaries: urban land is free, while in security zones prior permission is needed, and the area held by such foreigners is limited to 15%.
• Commercial property: the same rules.
• Renovation and resale are open; in the Balearics and on the Costa del Sol a municipal licence is needed for works.
• A foreigner's tax number (NIE) and a non-resident return (form 210) are needed.

Between places the difference lies not in the right to buy but in taxes and in the rules for short-term letting.

Tax on buying a completed home:

New build from a developer: VAT 10% (tax agency page) and stamp duty: 1.2% in Andalusia, 1% in the Canaries (where the IGIC tax applies instead of VAT), 1.5% in Valencia, per a notaries' page; official confirmation available on request.

Example: an apartment for €400,000.

The notary, registry and lawyer appear in the records only as a general range: a law firm page gives 10-15% on top of the price together with taxes, an agency page 9-10% for a completed house on the Costa del Sol, and up to 14% for Barcelona. These are estimates of lawyers and agencies, not official data.

Holding. The local property tax is levied by the city on the cadastral value; for urban properties the law sets a rate from 0.4% to 1.10%.

Sale:

• A non-resident pays 19% of the profit, the same for EU and non-EU (official text).
• The buyer withholds 3% of the price as an advance on this tax; any excess is returned via form 210.
• The city levies its own tax on the increase in land value (plusvalía); we have not yet checked its size.
• Transfer of proceeds abroad, according to an agency page, is free.

• Long-term. Free, but the contract is extended up to 5 years, or up to 7 if the landlord is a legal entity (official lease law).
• Short-term. A regional licence or registration is needed. Records differ: according to one, the national single register was annulled by a court in May 2026; according to another, the national number has been mandatory since 1 July 2025. We do not choose.
• Barcelona: licences are not renewed after 2028, and a new owner will not be able to let short-term. Valencia: the moratorium was lifted in 2026, but mainly lower floors are allowed, and the centre is almost closed. Costa del Sol: the consent of the owners' community is needed. Costa Blanca: a licence is needed when letting up to 10 nights to one guest. Canaries: permits and zoning.

Non-resident tax on rental income (official tax service page):

For a vacant home, an imputed income is taxed without deducting expenses.

This is tax in Spain. Tax in the investor's country of residence is calculated separately.

A mortgage is granted to a non-resident; we know the terms of one bank, CaixaBank (HolaBank), from its page:

• up to 70% of the value of the home (banks give residents up to 80%);
• a term of up to 20 years for income in euros and a number of currencies, 15 for some other currencies;
• an online application can be filed by residents of 15 countries of Western Europe, the USA and Canada; the others go to a branch.

These are a bank's terms, not a regulator's norm; the Bank of Spain showed no special rule for non-residents.

• The residence permit for a purchase from €500,000 was abolished from 3 April 2025; current holders keep their rights (KPMG review). One page still describes the programme as active; we follow the record of the abolition.
• Spain does not give direct citizenship for investment.

January 2015 - January 2026, housing in the country as a whole, market in euros:

Index, January 2015 = 100:

What this means:

• Prices are now at a peak in all four rows. They rose most in the last years of the table: from 154.3 in October 2023 to 200.7 in euros without adjustment.
• For a buyer with dollars, both the paper growth (+108.7%) and the real growth (+49.7%) are higher than in euros: the euro strengthened from 0.914 to 0.854 per dollar.
• In October 2022, when the euro was weakest in the table (0.981), the real index in dollars stood at 105.7 against 124.5 in euros.
• Above local inflation, housing rose by 4.0% a year.

A caveat: the index is for the country as a whole, and we do not yet have separate series for cities. The data for October 2025 are incomplete: the exchange rate for three months out of three, US prices for two.

The directory has 222 districts: Costa del Sol 80, the Canary Islands 50, Costa Blanca 25, Barcelona 18, Valencia 18, Madrid 16, the Balearic Islands 15.

Prices read from pages (asking prices, not deal prices), apartments:

Outside the table: Costa Blanca, the median asking price of a whole property at one agency (August 2026): Benidorm, new builds, €1,450,000; Finestrat 635,000; Rincon de Loix, villas, 1,780,000. Costa del Sol: La Sagaleta, a gated estate, villas from €4m (agency page of 16 June 2026). For Barcelona and the Canaries there are no prices on the pages read so far.

What can be seen:

• The central districts of Madrid are above €8,000 per sq m, the western suburbs about 4,000.
• The only fall over the year is in Retiro; Barajas and Las Rozas rose fastest.
• For some districts the page gives two figures (in the heading and in the text); we take the figure from the text.

What differs from housing:

• Purchase. A completed building is exempt from VAT, with a regional tax in its place, usually 6-11% (law firm page; official confirmation available on request). A new one carries VAT at 21%; the seller may waive the exemption if the buyer is a VAT payer with the right of deduction.
• VAT on rent. Only the letting of housing is exempt; commercial letting carries VAT at the general rate of 21%. A non-resident's obligations have not yet been checked by us.
• Tax on rental income is as for housing: 19% of net for the EU and EEA, 24% of gross for others.
• A company is not required: one can buy personally or through a Spanish company (SL).
• Contract. The terms are set by the parties. The law suggests a deposit of two monthly rents and compensation to the tenant of a retail premises after five years of trading; its terms should be checked against the text of the article.

Consultants' data as reported by news sites:

Shops on the main shopping streets across the country: prime yield 3.75%, 2025. The difference between the two consultants on office rent in Madrid is explained by different definitions; we do not choose.

Where it is concentrated: Madrid, offices in the business centre and on the Paseo de la Castellana, logistics along the A-2 motorway; Barcelona, the 22@ office district and the ZAL Port logistics zone of the port; Valencia, Avenida de Aragon and the Turia riverbed, offices at €16-18.5 per sq m per month (BNP Paribas Real Estate, March 2026).

A caveat: the consultants' figures describe the upper, prime segment; market averages are not yet recorded in our base.

• Open to foreigners; payments are protected by a bank guarantee. Two laws are named in the records, 57/1968 and 38/1999; we do not choose between them.
• VAT of 10% and stamp duty are added to the price (section 2).

The directory has 9 developers: AEDAS Homes, Civica Homes (Grupo Civica), Gestilar, Gomendio, Grupo Insur, Metrovacesa, Neinor Homes, Taylor Wimpey Spain, Vía Célere.

Listings: Idealista.com, Fotocasa.es, Habitaclia.com, OLX.com (Spain), Spain-real.estate, Viviendasnuevas.com; new builds on the sites of AEDAS Homes, Culmia, Neinor Homes.