Marbella had 13,633 homes registered for tourist use in September 2024, yet only about a third of the properties on the official books were actually being marketed on the main booking platforms. That gap — between a licence as a piece of paperwork and a holiday let as a functioning business — has become more important, not less, for buyers in 2026.
The legal framework has also moved in opposite directions at once. In May this year Spain's Supreme Court struck down the state procedure that forced short-term lets into a single national rental register and required a registration number before an advert could appear online. Two weeks later, however, the practical barriers that matter most to a buyer in Marbella were still standing: Andalucía's own tourism rules, municipal planning compatibility and, for many apartments, the approval of the community of owners. The result is a market in which the national form has become simpler while the property-specific due diligence has become more serious.
That matters because the economics remain tempting. Marbella's asking price reached €5,950 per square metre in July 2026, while asking rents reached €23.90/m² per month. On a notional 100 m² apartment, those two figures imply a €595,000 purchase price and about €2,390 a month in advertised long-term rent before costs — a rough gross relationship of just under 5%. Holiday letting can beat that in the right property and season, but in 2026 it is increasingly dangerous to value a home on Airbnb income before proving that the right to generate that income actually exists.
The Register That Disappeared
The most dramatic legal change came from Madrid rather than Málaga. Spain created a Registro Único de Arrendamientos under Royal Decree 1312/2024, with a national registration procedure intended to sit behind online short-let advertising. The system took effect in 2025 and was presented as the Spanish implementation of the EU's new data-sharing framework for short-term accommodation.
On 19 May 2026, the Supreme Court partially annulled that decree. The judgment, published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 8 June, struck down the provisions governing the single registration procedure and the obligation to obtain a number through the Property or Movable Property Registry in order to advertise short-term accommodation online. Further Supreme Court decisions on 21 May and 1 June reached the same broad conclusion, and the consolidated text of the decree now marks the relevant registration articles as annulled.
For owners, that sounds like deregulation. It is better understood as a transfer of weight. The court did not abolish Andalucía's tourism register, local planning powers or the rules of a community of owners. It removed a state-level layer that the court found had overstepped the division of competences. The current consolidated decree still contains the digital data framework around short-term accommodation, but the national registration route that dominated owner conversations in 2025 is no longer the gate through which a Marbella property must pass.
That distinction is crucial when a seller says a flat is “licensed”. A buyer now needs to know which permission exists, when it was obtained and whether it survives a change of owner or operating arrangement. A number on an old advert is evidence of history, not a substitute for current due diligence.
The 3/5 Vote Matters More Than the Missing Number
The single most important date for an apartment buyer is not the Supreme Court judgment but 3 April 2025. From that date, changes to Spain's Horizontal Property Law require an owner who wants to begin tourist-letting activity to obtain the express approval of the community of owners. The threshold is three-fifths of all owners representing three-fifths of the participation quotas. The same three-fifths majority can limit, condition or prohibit the activity.
The rule is not theoretical. An official 2025 decision from Spain's Directorate-General for Legal Certainty and Public Faith confirmed that a tourist-use authorisation obtained after 3 April 2025 required that express community approval. The law also allows the community, with the same majority, to impose special common charges or increase the tourist-let owner's share of common expenses by up to 20%. Existing lawful operators who were already carrying out the activity before the reform entered into force are treated differently and may continue under the transitional protection set out in the law.
For a buyer, this has changed the order in which questions should be asked. Ten years ago the conversation often began with projected weekly rates. In 2026 it should begin with the community statutes, the latest AGM minutes, the date the tourist activity was authorised and written proof of any community approval. A beachfront apartment with a perfect terrace can be a poor holiday-let investment if the building has voted against the activity; an unremarkable apartment in a community that has expressly approved it may be commercially more valuable.
This also means the phrase “the community has never complained” is not enough. Silence is not the same as the express approval now required for a new operator. The relevant BOE interpretation is unusually clear on that point, and buyers should ask their lawyer to verify it against the individual property rather than rely on sales particulars.
Andalucía Still Sets the Operating Rules
At regional level, tourist homes remain regulated under Andalucía's amended framework for viviendas de uso turístico. Decree 31/2024 tightened the conditions materially and, just as importantly, gave municipalities explicit scope to impose proportionate limits by building, sector, area, period or zone where justified by an overriding public interest.
The physical requirements are more specific than many buyers realise. A tourist home must generally provide at least 14 m² of built main-use area per guest and at least 25 m² overall. A whole-home tourist let cannot exceed 15 guests; a room-by-room operation is capped at six guests, with no more than four people per bedroom. A property offering more than five places needs at least two bathrooms, and one offering more than eight needs at least three. Bedrooms and living rooms require direct ventilation to the exterior or an appropriately ventilated patio, subject to limited heritage exceptions.
The operator must also declare the periods in which the property will function as tourist accommodation. Commercialising it outside those declared periods can be treated as clandestine activity. The Junta's rules additionally require compatibility with municipal planning and allow the regional registration to be cancelled where essential declarations are inaccurate or required sectoral permissions do not exist.
For buyers of villas, the community-approval question may disappear if the property is genuinely outside a horizontal-property regime, but the regional and municipal questions do not. For apartment buyers, all three layers can apply at once. That is why a simple “tourist licence included” line on a portal has become far less informative than it appears.
Why Marbella Is Regulating a €100 Million Market
The regulatory pressure makes more sense when set against the scale of the sector. Marbella's own study, prepared with researchers from the University of Málaga and published by the municipality, counted 13,857 registered tourist establishments and 110,080 tourist places in September 2024. Tourist homes accounted for 13,633 establishments and 79,264 places — about 72% of all tourist bed capacity in the municipality.
The most striking number, however, is the gap between registration and real activity. The study found that only around 32.5% of registered tourist homes were being advertised on the principal booking platforms. In other words, registration numbers had become a poor proxy for active supply. The report suggests that repeated discussion of possible restrictions encouraged owners to register properties defensively, even where they were not yet being commercially let.
The active market is still large. Marbella's municipal presentation of the study estimated that tourist homes generated around €100 million in 2024. About 79.2% of registered homes belonged to private individuals, while 98.7% were offered as entire properties. Some 86.2% had two or more bedrooms, and around 15% of those larger homes were villas or chalets. The research also recorded 1.2 million overnight stays in tourist homes in 2023, with 56% made by Spanish visitors and much of the remainder led by British and German guests.
Those figures explain why the issue is not a side argument about a handful of Airbnb flats. In parts of central Marbella the study found clusters where, within a one-kilometre radius of an individual tourist home, there could be roughly 1,000 other registered VUTs. The densest concentrations sit around the historic centre and seafront, with significant supply also around Nueva Andalucía and the golf corridors. For a useful picture of how the town centre itself is changing, our Marbella Pueblo market guide looks at the same streets from the ownership side rather than the tourism side.
The Demand Has Not Gone Away
Tighter rules are sometimes mistaken for falling demand. The latest hotel figures suggest the opposite. In June 2026, Marbella hotels hosted more than 82,000 travellers, up 19.9% from a year earlier, and recorded 288,841 overnight stays, up 6.7%. Foreign travellers numbered 64,037 for the month, against 18,261 domestic visitors.
The value of that demand also rose sharply. The municipal tourism department, using official hotel statistics, reported an average daily room rate of €315.40 in June, up 17.3% year on year, with RevPAR at €249.28, up 16.4%. Room occupancy was 77.4%, slightly below 80.1% a year earlier, while average stay shortened from 3.95 to 3.51 nights. Those are hotel numbers, not holiday-let yields, but they show why private owners continue to pursue the short-stay market: Marbella is still attracting a high-spend international visitor base even as regulation becomes more selective.
The property market is moving in parallel. Idealista's July 2026 asking-price data put Marbella at €5,950/m², a record and 4.6% above July 2025. Asking rents reached €23.90/m² per month, up 9.1% year on year; on the Nagüeles–Golden Mile corridor the figure was €27.60/m². Those are advertised prices rather than completed transactions, but they are useful for understanding the opportunity cost of locking a property into one rental strategy.
A 100 m² apartment priced at the Marbella asking average equates to about €595,000. At the current advertised long-term rent average, the same floor area implies about €2,390 a month, or €28,680 a year before vacancy, tax, community fees, management and maintenance — roughly 4.8% on an asking-price-to-asking-rent basis. A holiday let may gross more in July and August, but it also brings cleaning, platform commission, management, linen, guest turnover and regulatory risk. Our earlier piece on Marbella rental yields in 2026 goes into the income side in more detail.
What a Buyer Should Verify Before Pricing the Rental Income
The practical lesson is not that buyers should avoid holiday lets. It is that the rental right now belongs in the legal due-diligence file, not in the marketing brochure. Before attributing any premium to tourist income, a buyer should have their lawyer verify the property's current registration in the Andalusian Tourism Register, the date on which the activity was validly commenced, the community statutes and resolutions, any express three-fifths approval, the municipality's planning compatibility and the operating capacity permitted by the dwelling's size and bathrooms.
The second file should be commercial. If the seller says the property earns €40,000, €60,000 or €100,000 a year, ask for the actual booking statements, occupancy history and management invoices rather than a projection from an agent. Marbella's own study found that only a minority of registered homes were actually on the market; a licence by itself therefore says very little about achievable turnover. Historic trading evidence is much more useful than an annualised August weekly rate.
The third question is strategic: would the property still make sense if it had to be rented long term, used privately or left empty for a period? Marbella asking rents are currently rising faster than sale prices — 9.1% year on year versus 4.6% in July — which gives owners a credible fallback that did not always exist at the same level. Running costs and non-resident taxation still matter, of course, and our guide to what a Marbella home costs to own each year is worth reading alongside any rental calculation.
The Licence Is Not the Asset
The Supreme Court's 2026 ruling removed a layer of national paperwork, but it did not reopen Marbella to unrestricted holiday letting. In practical terms, the market has moved the other way: the decisive questions are now closer to the building and the property itself. Can the home legally be used this way under Andalucía's rules? Is it compatible with municipal planning? Has the community expressly approved the activity where approval is required? And is there a real trading history behind the advertised yield?
For a buyer, that is not necessarily bad news. Regulation tends to make a functioning, transferable and well-documented tourist-let operation more valuable precisely because not every neighbouring property can replicate it. But it also makes lazy assumptions expensive. A sea view, a pool and a key box are no longer enough to underwrite a holiday-let forecast.
This article is general information based on the rules and official publications in force in August 2026, not legal or tax advice. Short-term rental law has changed repeatedly and can interact differently with an individual building's statutes and municipal planning position, so buyers should obtain written advice from a Spanish lawyer before relying on tourist income in a purchase decision.
Domosmar works with buyers across Marbella and the wider Costa del Sol, from properties intended purely for private use to homes where rental flexibility is part of the brief. Browse current Marbella properties, explore the wider Costa del Sol collection, or contact the team and we can help you separate properties that merely advertise rental potential from those where the legal and commercial position actually supports it.
