August 25, 2026 Independent Spanish law firm coordinating residency, tax, property and estate planning for Americans retiring in Spain, alongside your US advisers.

August 25, 2026 Medicare does not cover you in Spain and the public buy-in needs a year of prior residence. What Americans must solve before year one.

August 25, 2026 How Spain taxes US 401(k), traditional IRA and Roth IRA distributions once you are tax resident – treaty, saving clause and the timing that decides it.

August 25, 2026 New-build in Rota? Free-market, protected (VPPL) and cooperative homes carry different rules. What an independent lawyer checks before you pay.

August 25, 2026 Buying new-build in Rota, Cádiz? Military authorisation, VPPL protected housing and cooperative structures decide whether you can buy at all.

August 25, 2026 Buying off-plan in Sotogrande, Alcaidesa or the Costa del Sol? What an independent lawyer must verify — guarantees, accounts, licence — before you pay.

August 6, 2026 Quick answerRenting and buying in Spain are not two prices for the same thing. A tenant gets a statutory term of five or seven years and risks one month’s deposit. An owner takes on tax, community and exit obligations that begin at completion and only end at sale. Most comparisons…

August 5, 2026 Quick answerIf you signed an agency agreement at home rather than in the agency’s office, you are probably a consumer with 14 calendar days to withdraw, free of charge. If the agency never told you that right existed, the window does not close in 14 days — it extends by…

August 5, 2026 Quick answerIn Spain a right of way is not created by using a track, however long. Article 539 of the Civil Code allows one to be acquired only by title. What can be compelled is separate: if your plot has no exit to a public road, Article 564 gives you…

August 5, 2026 Quick answerWhen you sell an inherited Spanish property, your acquisition value for capital gains is the value declared for inheritance tax, not what you paid. Declaring a low value to reduce inheritance tax therefore enlarges the gain later. The two taxes are linked, and the choice is made at the…

August 5, 2026 Quick answerLiability follows the pipe, not the ceiling. If the leak starts in a communal element the community pays for the repair and the damage; if it starts inside the upstairs flat, that owner and their home insurer do. Establishing where it originates is therefore the first thing to settle….

August 5, 2026 Quick answerIn a Spanish community of owners, the formal route against a persistently noisy neighbour is the acción de cesación under Article 7.2 of the Horizontal Property Act. It is brought by the community president, not by you individually, and only after a written demand to stop and a vote…

August 4, 2026 Quick answerIf you have never owned a home, buying in Spain first can permanently cost you Poland’s first-home PCC exemption. The relief requires that you have never owned residential property anywhere, in Poland or abroad. Decide the order before you sign in Spain. The order of your two purchases matters…

August 4, 2026 Quick answerDutch buyers expect purchase tax to depend on whether they will live in the property. In Spain it does not. Spanish transfer tax is set by the region where the property is, and a holiday home is taxed on purchase exactly like a main residence there. The assumption that…

August 4, 2026 Quick answerBelgian residents who buy in Spain must declare the property to the Belgian tax authorities within four months of acquiring it. That duty is separate from anything you pay in Spain, and it is the one most Belgian buyers do not know about. The four-month clock nobody mentions This…

August 4, 2026 Quick answerA sale of your property made by someone without your authority is null under Article 1259 of the Civil Code. But nullity alone may not return the property if it has already reached a protected buyer, so registering your claim is urgent. The short answer If someone sold your…

August 4, 2026 Quick answerIf you believe you are a victim of property fraud in Spain, your immediate step is to contact an independent Spanish lawyer before any further payment. First, stop the money Before anything else: if a further payment is scheduled, stop it. Contact your bank immediately and ask them to…

August 3, 2026 Quick answerGulf-resident heirs of Spanish property face one tax, not two: most GCC states levy no inheritance tax, so Spain’s is the whole bill. Since 2018 non-EU heirs may apply the regional reductions previously reserved to EU residents, and heirs who were denied them may be able to reclaim. Spain’s…

August 3, 2026 Quick answerIf you live in Ireland and inherit Spanish property, two separate taxes apply: Spanish inheritance tax on the property, and Irish CAT on you as beneficiary. There is no Ireland-Spain inheritance treaty, so relief comes from Irish unilateral relief. Spain’s return is due within six months of the death….

July 31, 2026 Buying a Spanish property without setting foot in the country is entirely possible — it’s built around one central document (a power of attorney) plus a handful of remote-compatible steps that, put together, cover the whole process. The power of attorney: the piece that makes it all work A power…

July 31, 2026 For a buyer not yet in Spain, a video call consultation is usually the first real step in the legal process — not a lesser substitute for an in-person meeting, but the natural starting point when the buyer and the property aren’t yet in the same country. What a video…

July 31, 2026 A fixed fee tells you the lawyer’s own charge won’t move with the property’s price — it doesn’t automatically tell you what’s actually bundled inside that fee, and that’s the part worth getting clear before you instruct anyone. What “fixed fee” actually promises A fixed-fee quote fixes the lawyer’s own…

July 31, 2026 A legal opinion letter isn’t a standard part of buying a Spanish property — it’s a specific document that surfaces when someone outside the transaction needs formal, addressed confirmation before they’ll act, and knowing when that applies (and when it doesn’t) saves confusion later. What it actually is A legal…

July 31, 2026 A completion holdback exists because the paperwork proving a Spanish property is debt-free doesn’t always arrive in time to check it before the money changes hands — so the money waits instead. What actually gets held back, and why Rather than releasing the full purchase price to the seller at…

July 31, 2026 Getting a foreign document accepted by a Spanish notary comes down to two separate procedures done in the right order — get the order wrong, and the whole process restarts from scratch. What the notary actually needs from a foreign buyer Beyond a valid passport or national ID, any foreign…

July 31, 2026 Damp is one of the most common findings in an independent Spanish property survey — and one of the least likely things a bank valuation will ever mention, because checking for it was never the valuation’s job. Why it’s so common in older properties Many older Spanish homes were built…

July 31, 2026 Asbestos isn’t a niche risk in older Spanish properties — fibre cement roofing containing it was standard practice for decades, and knowing what the law actually requires (and doesn’t) matters before you buy, not after. Spain’s phased asbestos bans Asbestos use was banned in Spain in stages rather than all…

July 31, 2026 The ITE is one of those Andalucian building-compliance requirements that’s invisible until it isn’t — and for a buyer of an older property, checking its status before completion can be the difference between a smooth purchase and inheriting someone else’s overdue repair bill. What the ITE actually is The Inspección…

July 31, 2026 A lot of buyers assume the bank’s valuation is a stand-in for a proper survey. It isn’t — and finding that out after completion, rather than before, is one of the more avoidable regrets in a Spanish property purchase. What a bank valuation actually checks A tasación exists to confirm…

July 31, 2026 Property insurance in Spain splits into building and contents cover in a way that isn’t always obvious from the outside — and whether you actually need to arrange both yourself depends heavily on whether you’re buying into a community or a standalone property. Building cover: the structure itself Building insurance…

July 31, 2026 Student property in a Spanish university city can be a strong rental-yield investment — but the legal structure underneath it is closer to a seasonal let than an ordinary residential tenancy, and getting that distinction right from the start matters more than most investors realise. Student lets usually aren’t standard…

July 31, 2026 Flipping a property in Spain — buy, renovate, resell — runs into two tax realities most investors don’t expect: the renovation itself is usually taxed at the higher VAT rate, and none of the sale-side reliefs built for homeowners apply, because a flip was never your home. The reduced renovation…

July 31, 2026 There’s no such thing as a portfolio discount in Spanish property tax — but there is a portfolio-wide calculation that catches investors who only ever think property by property. Transfer tax doesn’t care how many properties you own ITP (transfer tax) is charged per transaction, at the rate set by…

July 31, 2026 Treating a Spanish rental property as a long-term retirement-income asset works financially for a lot of buyers — but legally and fiscally, it behaves nothing like a pension fund, and the differences only really surface years into holding it. No tax-sheltered wrapper Unlike a pension fund or an ISA, rental…

July 31, 2026 Buying a Spanish property to let out isn’t just a tax question — it’s a financing and compliance question first, and the answers surprise a lot of investors who assume it works the way it does back home. There’s no real “buy-to-let mortgage” for non-residents Spanish banks don’t offer a…

July 31, 2026 A retirement village or assisted-living complex in Spain is a property purchase wrapped around a services contract — and it’s the services contract, more than the title itself, where the real legal review needs to happen. The property purchase follows the normal process Buying a unit in a retirement village…

July 31, 2026 Downsizing after 65 isn’t just a lifestyle decision in Spain — it can also be one of the most tax-efficient moves available to a resident homeowner, provided the sale is structured and timed correctly. The over-65 exemption: the single biggest lever If you are a Spanish tax resident, over 65,…

July 31, 2026 The S1 form is the single most important piece of paperwork for a UK state pensioner settling in Spain — it’s also one of the most commonly delayed, simply because the application process doesn’t work the way most modern government forms do. What the S1 actually does If you’re drawing…

July 31, 2026 Retiring to Spain past 60 isn’t legally harder than moving younger — but the checklist is different, because the things that matter most (healthcare, succession, incapacity planning) are exactly the things that are easy to leave until it’s too late to arrange smoothly. 1. Choose the residency route that fits…

July 31, 2026 A trust that works perfectly well for a UK or US asset does not simply carry over to a Spanish property — Spanish civil law has no equivalent concept, and the Supreme Court has said so directly. Why the trust concept doesn’t translate Spain’s civil law system treats ownership as…