The British have bought homes in Spain for generations, and Brexit did not end that. What it did was quietly change the terms, moving Britons from the privileged position of EU citizens to that of third-country nationals, and the differences show up precisely where it hurts: how long you can stay, how you are taxed as an owner, and how hard it is to make Spain a real home. The house is as available as ever. The rules around it are not the ones the previous generation knew.
Two things survived. The double tax convention is bilateral, not European: the convention published in the Spanish gazette entered into force on 12 June 2014. And a Briton legally resident in Spain before 1 January 2021 keeps Withdrawal Agreement rights, evidenced, as the guidance for Britons in Spain insists, by the foreigner identity card.
The ninety-day reality
The most immediate change is time. As a non-EU visitor, a Briton is now subject to the limit on days that can be spent in the Schengen area without a residence permit, the familiar ninety-in-any-hundred-and-eighty pattern. The retiree who once drifted between a Spanish home and a British one without counting now has to count, and the family that assumed unlimited summers has a ceiling. Spending real time in Spain now generally means obtaining a residence permit rather than relying on visitor status.
The allowance is not Spanish. As the entry requirements published for Spain set out, the 90 days in any 180-day period are counted across the whole Schengen area, and trips elsewhere in it consume the same allowance. The window rolls forward daily, so a pattern compliant in May can breach in September with no new travel. Overstaying can attract a ban of up to three years.
Ownership confers no entitlement, and the day count is evidenced by the state. A second count does the opposite work: under article 9 of the personal income tax act, more than 183 days in a calendar year makes a person Spanish tax resident, as does holding the main centre of economic interests there. Treating the two limits as one number is the commonest error.
Taxed as a non-EU owner
Brexit also moved Britons into the non-EU category for several Spanish tax purposes, and the category is less favourable. Certain reliefs and rates available to EU residents no longer apply, which can raise the effective tax on income from a Spanish property and on gains when it is sold. The house did not change; the bracket it sits in did, and a British owner planning around figures from the pre-Brexit era may be working from numbers that no longer hold.
Letting income shows the mechanism. The tax is charged on each accrual gross. Article 24 of the non-resident income tax law lets residents of EU and qualifying EEA states deduct costs inseparably linked to the Spanish activity, and Britons fell out of it. The table of rates published by the tax agency then charges EU, Icelandic and Norwegian residents 19 per cent and everyone else 24. A British landlord is taxed on turnover; an EU neighbour on margin.
An empty house is not untaxed. The tax agency’s note on imputed income applies 1.1 per cent of cadastral value where the municipality’s values have been revised, and 2 per cent otherwise. Order HAC/623/2026 then sets that filing between 1 April and 31 December of the following year and, per the note on the new form 210 periods, adds an annex itemising deductible expenses.
The convention does not undo this: article 6 gives the primary right to the state where the property sits, so Spain is paid first and the owner claims foreign tax credit relief on the UK return, supported by an HMRC certificate of residence. The credit is capped at the UK tax on the same income, so the Spanish charge on gross rent is usually permanent.
Brexit did not take the house away from the British buyer. It took away the assumptions: unlimited time, EU tax treatment, residence for the asking.
The exit, and who is on the hook
Selling is built for collection. Article 25.2 obliges the buyer, resident or not, to withhold 3 per cent of the price, and the tax agency’s guidance on gains from property completes it: form 211 within one month, a copy to the seller, credit against the tax on the gain, the excess reclaimed.
Enforcement is in the next sentence. If the withholding is not paid over, the charge that provision leaves on the property attaches for the lesser of the withholding and the tax, so liability follows the land rather than the seller. The rate on the gain did not change: 19 per cent, wherever the seller lives. What went is the reinvestment relief for a former main residence, confined by the seventh additional provision to EU and EEA residents.
The municipal levy on the increase in urban land value is separate. Article 106 of the local finance law makes the seller the taxpayer, but where that seller is a non-resident individual the buyer becomes the substitute taxpayer, liable to the town hall in the seller’s place. No charge arises without an increase, but the exclusion must be claimed with both deeds.
Wealth tax and the solidarity levy
Two annual charges reach the house whatever the owner’s residence. Under the real obligation in the wealth tax act, a non-resident is taxed on assets situated in Spain, with a 700,000 euro minimum exemption under article 28 and a state scale of 0.2 to 3.5 per cent under article 30. The fourth additional provision lets them use their region’s rules, and the 2021 act that rewrote it dropped the EU-only confinement.
The relief residents rely on does not travel. Article 31 caps combined wealth and income tax at 60 per cent of the income tax base only under the personal obligation, so a non-resident owner has no ceiling and a low-yielding asset carries the full charge. The same asymmetry runs through article 3 of Law 38/2022, the solidarity levy on net wealth above 3,000,000 euros at 1.7, 2.1 and 3.5 per cent.
That statute carries an obligation which arrived with Brexit rather than with the tax: a taxpayer not resident in an EU member state must appoint a representative resident in Spain before the filing period closes, and article 10 of the non-resident income tax law does the same for property owners where the administration requires it. Article 21 of the convention leaves the capital taxable where the property sits.
Succession, and the rules the courts opened
Inheritance tax applies on a real obligation to assets situated in Spain and falls on each heir rather than on the estate, so an heir who has never entered the country files and pays there. The second additional provision of that act is headed as the adaptation of the tax to the judgment of the Court of Justice of 3 September 2014 in Case C-127/12.
Under it, heirs of a non-resident deceased may apply the rules of the community in which the greatest value of the Spanish estate lies. As enacted it covered only EU and EEA residents; the 2021 act removed that limit, putting British heirs inside the regional regimes where the allowances live. Which regime applies turns on where the asset stands and where the deceased lived, not where the heirs are.
Which law governs the estate is separate. Spain applies Regulation (EU) No 650/2012, under which succession follows the law of the last habitual residence unless the law of nationality is chosen, as the European Union’s guidance on cross-border succession sets out. The United Kingdom never participated, but the regulation binds Spain, so the choice stays open.
In your own name, or through a company
Interposing a company does not move the house out of Spain. Article 13 of the convention lets Spain tax gains on shares, other than those regularly traded on an exchange, deriving more than 50 per cent of their value from Spanish immovable property. Domestic law works independently: article 5 of the wealth tax act deems unlisted shares situated in Spain where at least half the entity’s assets are Spanish real estate.
What an authority or a bank examines is consistency rather than form. Who funded the purchase. Whether the company files where it claims residence. Whether shareholders occupying the property pay for the use. And whether the letting has become something larger: the tax agency’s guidance on letting income notes that a full-time employee running it can make it a permanent establishment.
Which leaves the honest case for a structure. It is not situs tax, since situs tax follows the land. The only charge a British company escapes is the special levy on non-resident entities, reserved for non-cooperative jurisdictions. The case is transferring an interest without a Spanish deed, holding a co-owned asset across a family, and planning an exit.
Residence, deliberately
For the Briton who wants more than ninety-day summers, the route now runs through Spanish residence, obtained on purpose through an appropriate permit, and with residence comes the full Spanish tax position, including the wealth taxes and worldwide income. That is not a reason to avoid it; it is a reason to plan it, potentially using the favourable inbound regime where genuine activity is involved, as in our note on the Beckham law, and always with the residence tests understood, as in our note on Spanish tax residence.
Residence changes the direction of those charges rather than adding to them. Worldwide income comes into scope, but the wealth taxes move to the personal obligation, which restores the 60 per cent cap, and the representative requirement falls away. The inbound regime is for people who move to work, not people who own a house.
One route has closed, and the timing is unkind. Law 14/2013 expressly did not apply to citizens of the Union, so its economic-interest permits reached Britons only after the transition period. The investor route was then withdrawn: articles 63 to 67 of that law were left without content from 3 April 2025 by the twenty-first final provision of Organic Law 1/2025.
The plan the British buyer now needs
None of this makes Spain a worse choice for a British buyer; it makes it a planned one. Decide the intended pattern of time, choose visitor status or residence accordingly, own the property in a form that suits the post-Brexit tax position, as in our note on holding a Spanish home, and settle the succession while alive, as in who inherits your Spanish villa. Done deliberately, the British dream of a Spanish home is entirely intact. It simply no longer runs on autopilot.
The order of those decisions determines the cost more than any one of them. The pattern of days sets the tax status; the tax status sets which wealth regime applies and whether the 60 per cent cap is available; the form of title sets the exit and the succession, and cannot be altered without a Spanish transfer.
Montclare advises international individuals and families on buying, holding and moving to Spain: the structure, the tax, the residence and the succession, handled as one plan. Our services are set out on our services page.
This article is informational and does not constitute tax, legal or immigration advice. Spanish regimes vary by region and change frequently, and treatment depends on personal circumstances. Each engagement is subject to scope and applicable regulation.