Chaos as Spain's new regulations for holiday home owners come into force

Pilar Martínez

Malaga

Friday, 4 April 2025, 11:24

Thousands of owners of holiday homes are confused and alarmed by the entry into force on Thursday, 3 April, of the modification to Spain's Horizontal Property Law. This update obliges such property owners to have express authorisation from their respective residents' association, which must come with three-fifths of the votes in favour, in order to be able to develop any holiday rental trade. Moreover, this modification is a fundamental step towards complying with the new central government decree to register all such properties on the 'Registro Único Digital' (a single digital register) before 1 July. This is a regulation that is beginning to be applied with so many uncertainties. For example, there is not even a consensus between property registrars, property owners and the governing authorities as to whether this approval from community neighbours is required only for newly created holiday rentals or for all existing ones. This is an issue that really needs clarifying because it is an essential step to ensuring they can effectively market tourist housing on online platforms from July onwards.

The lack of clarity surrounding the decree and the need to safeguard their interests caused an avalanche of registrations on Wednesday this week, which triggered the collapse of the online portal to Spain's association of property registrars, a situation that continued on Thursday morning. Thousands of homeowners struggled until the stroke of midnight to register their properties ahead of the deadline to avoid the obligation to have to make a personal declaration that they have the approval of their residential association, fearing that the registrar on duty would demand it of all the properties as a whole.

Andalucía's tourist housing association Avva-Pro places the cause for this panic and rush of registrations squarely on the shoulders of the confusion generated by how property registrars are interpreting the new government regulation. They are the ones who have the power to proceed with the registration in question for the property to go on the Registro Único Digital, which will determine whether or not the owner can continue to exercise holiday rental activity from 1 July. "We are aware that there is no unanimous interpretation and that there are registrars in several Andalusian provinces who have already warned that this express authorisation from the neighbours will be obligatory for all such properties and others who consider that the law makes it clear that the permission of the neighbours is only essential for new holiday rentals," explains Juan Cubo, president of Avva-Pro.

Spain's BOE official state gazette dated 3 January on the modification of the Horizontal Property Law stated that "the owner of a property that is exercising the activity referred to in letter e) of article 5 of Law 29/1994, of 24 November, on Urban Leases, prior to the entry into force of the Organic Law on measures for the efficiency of the Public Justice Service, who has previously applied the sectoral tourism regulations may continue to exercise the activity with the conditions and deadlines established therein." An article that Cubo stressed is the one that clearly determines that the dwellings that are already operational are exempt from needing this express permission from the neighbours, but it seems that not everyone understands it this way. SUR sent this query for clarification to the association of property registrars without receiving a response at the time of publication.

The confusion is so great that these residential housing associations have already communicated to Spain's Ministry of Housing the need to clarify the situation as soon as possible. "We are facing a very serious problem. We are being left in the lurch at the mercy of the residents' associations. It is the final straw for the sector", say these owners, who are fearful of what this new regulation will mean for their business.

The situation is complicated in Andalucía by the fact that such property owners have already had their tourist licence number issued by the Junta's Turismo department, which required the submission of a 'responsible declaration', a formal declaration that is understood by the licensing authority to mean that there are no objections from the residential community to granting said licence. This is what was understood until now. As of Thursday this week, the Spanish government requires that each property - understood to be each new tourist property - must have the express authorisation of the neighbours. The Junta's regional minister for Tourism, Arturo Bernal, warns that "this creates a problem for the majority of regions that have a procedure in place for registration with Turismo via a responsible declaration and thus how we deal with the effects of the entry into force of the Horizontal Property Law because, as a result of all this nonsense, which is related to the decree on the single digital property register, the inscriptions that do not make it onto the single register will not be able to operate commercially on platforms even if they are on the regional register."

In fact, Avva-Pro points out that not even 5% of the nearly 82,000 tourist dwellings in the province registered on the Andalusian tourism register have been able to sign up to the single e-register and yet they must be registered by 1 July in order to stay in business.