Spain’s 2026 Housing Decree: What Costa Brava Owners Pay

Every time Madrid passes a housing measure, the same two questions reach us within a week: can I still buy, and how much more will it cost me each year. The honest answer this time is that the decree is aimed at the rental market, not at foreign buyers, and that most of our clients will feel it as paperwork rather than as money. The people who should read it closely are the ones buying with a tourist licence and a yield projection in hand. Below is what changed, what it costs, and what it leaves alone, written from the four municipalities we work in every week: Lloret de Mar, Blanes, Palafrugell and Castell-Platja d’Aro.

What the October 2026 decree is, and what it is not

Real Decreto-ley 29/2026 of 6 October was published in the BOE on 7 October and took effect on 8 October 2026. It bundles together tenant protections, tax reliefs for landlords who cut rents, a 10 billion euro credit line for first-time buyers, and a set of tax increases aimed at short-term and empty housing. It does not restrict who may buy property in Spain. It does not revive the proposed 100% surcharge on purchases by non-EU buyers, which has been stuck in Congress since May 2025 and was dropped from the government’s own January 2026 housing package. And it does not change transfer tax, which in Catalonia is set regionally.

Do you let the house for a few weeks a year? 10% VAT from 1 December 2026

This is the change with the earliest date and the widest reach. From 1 December 2026, letting a furnished dwelling to the same tenant for a period that does not exceed 30 nights stops being exempt from VAT and is taxed at the reduced rate of 10%. The same applies at any length when you provide services typical of the hotel trade, such as cleaning during the stay, changes of linen, reception or meals. Letting your own habitual residence is excluded.

In practice this turns a private owner who lets a holiday home into a VAT taxpayer. You either add 10% to what the guest pays or absorb it out of the current price, and you take on quarterly VAT returns. It is not a large sum on a single property, but it is a new obligation with a date on it, and the time to speak to your gestor is November, not January.

Two things stay as they were. A long let of a habitual residence under the LAU remains VAT-exempt. And a seasonal let of more than 30 nights is outside this VAT rule, although in Catalonia it has been inside the rent-cap rules since 1 January 2026, which is a separate story we cover below.

Will my IBI go up?

Possibly, but not automatically and not before 2027. The decree gives town halls two new powers, and both are optional: each municipality has to write the surcharge into its own tax ordinance, and both only bite for tax periods starting on 1 January 2027.

Homes used as tourist accommodation

In municipalities declared a tensioned residential market, a town hall may add up to 50% to the IBI bill of a residential property used as tourist accommodation, up to 100% where the owner holds two or more such properties, and up to 150% at four or more. This is the part that matters on our coast, because Lloret de Mar, Blanes, Palafrugell and Castell-Platja d’Aro are all on the Generalitat’s list of tensioned municipalities. Being on that list does not mean the surcharge exists; it means the town hall is allowed to create it. Municipal tax ordinances for the following year are normally approved in the autumn, so the 2027 ordinances are being written right now.

Permanently empty homes

The second surcharge targets dwellings left empty, continuously and without justified cause, for more than two years, and it rises with the number of homes the owner holds and with a vacancy longer than three years. Read the wording rather than the headline: use as a second residence is one of the justified causes of non-occupation, alongside a temporary move for work or study, illness and a property genuinely on the market for sale, let or refurbishment. A holiday home you actually come to is not a permanently empty home.

The tax on a home you simply keep for yourself

If you are not resident in Spain and your Spanish property is not let, you still file every year. You declare a notional income on the property, currently 1.1% of its cadastral value in most municipalities, and you pay non-resident income tax on it at 19% if you are resident in the EU, Iceland or Norway, and 24% if you are not.

The arithmetic is small but real. On a cadastral value of 300,000 euros, 1.1% is 3,300 euros of notional income, which is 627 euros a year for an EU resident and 792 euros for a British or other non-EU owner. Note that cadastral value is usually well below market value, so the figure on your IBI receipt is the one to use, not the price you paid.

From 1 January 2027 the flat percentage is replaced by a scale of 1.1%, 1.5%, 2% and 3%, applied according to the combined cadastral value of the properties you hold. A single family home stays at the bottom of the scale. Someone holding several Spanish properties that are neither a main home nor let moves up it. The brackets are set in the decree and are worth checking with your tax adviser against your own cadastral values before the 2027 return.

Separately, the Catalan tourist tax is rising

This one is not part of the Madrid decree at all. It comes from Llei 2/2026 of 6 March, passed by the Catalan Parliament. For a dwelling with a tourist licence outside Barcelona the tax went from 1 euro to 1.75 euros per person per night on 1 April 2026, and rises again to 2.50 euros on 1 April 2027. On top of that, from 1 October 2026 a municipality may apply its own surcharge of up to 4 euros per night, again only if it approves an ordinance and signs an agreement with the Catalan tax agency. A maximum of seven nights per guest is taxed. The guest pays it, but the owner or the management company collects it, shows it as a separate line on the invoice and files twice a year on Modelo 950.

What this means if you are buying on the Costa Brava now

Our read, as of October 2026. For the buyer we see most often, who takes a villa for family summers and Easter and lets it for a handful of weeks, the decree moves the annual cost by a few hundred euros and adds a VAT registration. It is an administrative change, not a reason to rethink a purchase.

Where it genuinely changes the numbers is the purchase made for tourist yield. Stack the 10% VAT, a possible IBI surcharge of 50% or more, and a tourist tax heading for 2.50 euros plus up to 4 euros of municipal surcharge, and any yield projection built on 2024 figures is out of date. Add the fact that tourist licences in Catalonia run to November 2028 and new ones are granted for five years, renewable only if town planning allows, and the case for buying a property purely as a rental machine on this coast is weaker than it was two years ago. The case for buying a house you want to use yourself is untouched.

Four things we now check with every buyer before a reservation contract is signed: whether the property holds a valid tourist licence and until when; whether the municipality sits on the tensioned-market list, which on our stretch of coast it almost always does; whether the town hall has put an IBI surcharge into its 2027 ordinance; and what the cadastral value is, because that single number now drives both the IBI and the notional income you will declare each year.

Questions buyers are asking us this month

Related reading: tourist rental licences on the Costa Brava, the costs people forget when buying in Spain and wealth tax in Catalonia for villa buyers.

Sources: Real Decreto-ley 29/2026 of 6 October (BOE, 7 October 2026); Llei 2/2026 of 6 March on the Catalan tax on stays in tourist establishments (DOGC); Generalitat de Catalunya list of declared tensioned residential market municipalities; Agencia Tributaria guidance on non-resident income tax and notional property income. Position as of October 2026. Tax rules change and municipal ordinances differ, so verify your own case with a Spanish tax adviser before acting.