Maintenance fees of property in Spain

It’s all very well knowing where you want to buy property in Spain and how much the average house prices are there, but what about the price of upkeep and maintenance? Once you’ve bought the place, you’ll want to know what other recurring expenses you’ll have to pay for your new Spanish home, apart from the obvious ones like electricity, gas and internet.

Property taxes

• IRNR Non-resident income tax (Impuesto sobre la Renta de No Residentes): This yearly tax is only applicable for people who own property in Spain but are not official residents of the country. Assuming that you don’t earn any sort of income from rent or anything else on Spanish territory, the tax will be calculated based on the value of your home. It is worked out at 24.75% of a given percentage of the cadastral value, between 1% and 2% depending on when the value was established. If the cadastral value of your home were 100,000 euro, for example, the IRNR would be 24.75% of 1%, that is, 247.50 euro per year. Of course, the exact value for you will depend on your house’s cadastral value, which you can find out from the Land Registry Office.
• IRPF Personal Income Tax (Impuesto sobre la Renta de Personas Físicas): However, the IRNR won’t apply to you if you are a resident of Spain, but rather you will have to pay the IRPF, filing your tax returns like any other Spanish citizen based on your annual income.
• IBI tax on immovable real estate assets (Impuesto Sobre Bienes Inmuebles): Regardless of whether you’re registered as a Spanish resident or not, you have to pay this property tax just like everybody else. It is worked out based on the regional cadastral value, a percentage of the land value that is normally below market values. In practice, this means paying anywhere between 400 and 1000 euro each year.

Other expenses

• Community fees (comunidad) to pay for the maintenance of shared, communal spaces used by you and your neighbours if you live in an urbanización private housing estate or in an apartment block, such as swimming pools, tennis courts, green spaces, stairwells and general cleaning costs. The budget is decided yearly by the owners’ association, which you have the right to be a part of, and is divided between all the neighbours who live there. Think about 60 to 130 euro a month.
• Other communal expenses: As well as the comunidad, there are other services which are covered by the local authority and not by the building or estate you live in, such as rubbish collection, so you have to pay a sort of council tax for the privilege. This varies depending on the province you live in.
• Home insurance: For a Spanish house as with any other property, it’s always a good idea to have home and contents insurance for any eventuality. Spanish insurance providers normally charge around 180 to 380 euro per year, depending on your property.
• Home administrator: If all this seems overwhelming to organise, especially in Spanish, you could always just hire a property manager to do the paperwork and organise all your payments for you. For the cost of 100 or 150 euro each year, you can sit back in your Mediterranean home in the sun and let someone else worry about the running costs!