Domosmar Property Blog

The Tax on an Empty House: What a Marbella Home Really Costs to Own Each Year

Spain taxes you for a rental income you never collect. Any non-resident who owns a home on the Costa del Sol and leaves it empty for the winter is still deemed, in the eyes of the Spanish tax authority, to be earning money from it — and is taxed accordingly. It is the single most misunderstood cost of ownership, and it is only one line in an annual budget most buyers never see until the year after they complete.

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Legal & Finance

The Tax on an Empty House: What a Marbella Home Really Costs to Own Each Year

Legal & Finance

Selling, Not Buying: What a Non-Resident Pays to Exit a Marbella Property in 2026

Every non-resident who sells a property in Spain walks out of the notary''s office with less than the agreed price in their account — by law. The buyer is obliged to hold back 3% of the sale figure and pay it straight to the Agencia Tributaria before the seller sees a cent of the balance. On a €1.8 million villa in Nueva Andalucía, that is €54,000 withheld on the day of signing. Selling a Marbella home is, fiscally, nothing like buying one.

Legal & Finance

Leaving a Marbella Home to Your Heirs: Spanish Inheritance Law and Tax for Foreign Owners

A decade ago, a son inheriting a €1.5 million villa in Mijas faced a Spanish inheritance tax bill of €474,260. Under the rules now in force in Andalucía, the same inheritance produces a bill of roughly €4,742 — and if the estate had been worth under €1 million per heir, nothing at all. For the thousands of foreign families who own property between Marbella and Casares, the question of what happens to a Spanish home on death has quietly become one of the most favourable parts of the entire ownership equation. It has also become one of the least understood.

Legal & Finance

Andalucía’s “100% Wealth Tax Rebate”: What HNW Buyers in Marbella Actually Pay in 2026

On a €5 million villa in La Zagaleta held by a non-resident, the annual wealth-tax bill in 2026 lands at roughly €22,000 — paid to the Junta de Andalucía rather than to the State in Madrid. Andalucía’s celebrated 100 per cent wealth-tax rebate quietly changed in 2024. Here is what high-net-worth buyers in Marbella, La Zagaleta and Sierra Blanca actually pay under the regime as it stands today.

Legal & Finance

Spanish Mortgages for Non-Residents: Financing a Costa del Sol Home in 2026

The waiting room of a notary's office just off Avenida Ricardo Soriano in central Marbella is one of the calmer corners of the town. On a Tuesday morning in May, the air conditioning hums against the heat outside, a stack of property files waits on the reception desk, and a couple in their fifties are turning the pages of a thick document a bank handed them ten days earlier. They are not buying anything today, and they are not signing anything either. This is the acta previa — the appointment where a notary confirms, clause by clause, that they understand the mortgage they are about to take on.

Legal & Finance

The Non-Resident's Complete Tax & Cost Guide to Buying Property in Marbella in 2026

The notaría on Calle Ramón y Cajal in Marbella's old town is busy by nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning. In forty minutes, a Belgian couple will sign an escritura pública transferring ownership of a three-bedroom villa in El Rosario. The price is agreed, the mortgage is in place — but what they are reviewing one last time is a line-by-line breakdown of every euro owed to the Spanish state, the notary, the land registry, and their legal team before the property becomes truly theirs.

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