Property Taxes in Spain: Annual Running Costs

Running costs in Spain are low by northern European standards, but they are not zero and they are not uniform. Two apartments with the same asking price can differ by more than a thousand euros a year depending on the community they sit in and the catastral value the town hall has on file. This guide breaks the bill into its parts, then shows what drives each one.

IBI (Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles)

IBI is Spain’s equivalent of council tax or property tax. It is calculated as a percentage of the catastral value (a government-assessed value, usually well below market value). Rates vary by municipality but typically fall between 0.4% and 1.1% of the catastral value. In Torrevieja, expect €200–€500 for an apartment and €400–€800 for a villa. IBI is paid annually, usually in September or October, and can be set up as a direct debit from your Spanish bank account.

Basura (Rubbish Collection Tax)

Every municipality charges a separate annual rubbish collection fee. In Torrevieja this is around €100–€150/year. In Orihuela Costa it is slightly higher at €120–€200/year. This is billed separately from IBI and is not optional. Some municipalities include it in the IBI bill; others send a separate demand.

Community Fees (Cuota de Comunidad)

If your property is part of a community (urbanización), you’ll pay monthly fees for shared amenities: pool maintenance, garden upkeep, building insurance, stairwell cleaning, and lift maintenance. For a typical two-bedroom apartment with communal pool, expect €40–€80/month. Larger complexes with multiple pools, gyms or security can charge €100–€150/month. Detached villas in private urbanisations usually pay €30–€60/month for road and shared area maintenance.

What Actually Drives Your Community Fee

Community fees are not set by the size of your property. They are set by what the community owns and has to maintain, divided by the number of owners paying in. That is why the number varies so much between two apartments in the same town.

Counting the amenities advertised across our whole book gives a fair sense of what you are likely to be paying into. 1,491 listings have a communal pool and 1,142 have a lift: both are recurring maintenance lines, and the lift is the one that generates unexpected special levies as it ages. 230 have communal gardens and a further 161 specify landscaped communal gardens, which means a gardener on contract rather than an occasional visit. 226 include a communal gym and 133 underground parking; both push fees toward the upper end of the ranges above.

At the other extreme, 251 listings in the book are marketed with no community fees at all. These are typically detached properties on their own plot with no shared infrastructure. The saving is real, but so is the trade-off: every repair, every pool refill and every square metre of garden is yours alone to pay for and organise.

Before you make an offer, ask for the community budget and the last two sets of minutes. The budget tells you the fee. The minutes tell you what the community has been arguing about, which is usually what it is about to spend money on. More detail in our community fees guide.

How Property Type Changes the Bill

Type matters as much as town. Apartments and penthouses carry the highest community fees and the lowest IBI. Villas invert that: little or no community charge, but the full cost of a private pool, garden and exterior maintenance, plus a higher catastral value driving IBI up.

The bungalow line is worth pausing on. At a median asking price of €314,900 it is the cheapest type in the book, and it usually comes with a private garden inside a managed community, a middle position that keeps the fee moderate while giving you outdoor space. That combination is why bungalows are so heavily represented among retirement buyers. Browse them alongside everything else on our properties for sale page.

Home Insurance

Building insurance is usually included in community fees for apartments (covering the structure), but you’ll want contents insurance and third-party liability cover. A standard policy for a two-bedroom apartment costs €150–€300/year. Villas cost more, typically €300–€500/year including building cover. Spanish insurers like Mapfre, Zurich and Linea Directa all offer English-language policies.

Utilities

Electricity: Spain’s electricity market is liberalised with multiple suppliers. A two-bedroom property with air conditioning used moderately costs €60–€100/month in summer, €30–€50/month in winter. Heavy A/C use can push summer bills to €150+.

Water: €20–€40/month for a household of two. Billed quarterly in most municipalities.

Internet + mobile: Fibre broadband packages start at €30–€40/month from providers like Movistar, Orange and Digi.

Non-Resident Tax (Modelo 210)

If you don’t live in Spain full-time, you must file an annual imputed income tax return. The tax is calculated on 1.1% of the catastral value, taxed at 19% for EU/EEA residents or 24% for others. For a property with a catastral value of €80,000, the annual tax would be approximately €167 (EU) or €211 (non-EU). A gestor (tax advisor) charges €50–€100 to file this for you.

Total Annual Cost Summary

Properties at Different Price Points

Here are real listings currently available, to give you a sense of what these annual costs look like relative to the purchase price:

Running Costs in Proportion to Purchase Price

Annual costs scale with the property, not with the town, so the useful question is what share of the purchase price you should set aside each year. Here are the median asking prices in the towns we sell most in, to size that against:

Against a Torrevieja median of €260,000, an apartment running at the middle of the ranges in the summary table above costs roughly 1% of its purchase price per year to hold. That is the number worth carrying in your head. It is well below the equivalent for most northern European markets, and it is the reason a modest pension goes a long way here.

The Costs You Only Meet When You Sell

Three charges arrive at the far end of ownership, and none of them appear in an annual budget. Plan for them at purchase, not at sale.

Plusvalía municipal. A town hall tax on the increase in the land value between your purchase and your sale. It is calculated by the ayuntamiento on the catastral land value and the years of ownership, and it is normally paid by the seller.

Capital gains tax. Payable on the profit, calculated as sale price less purchase price less the allowable costs you paid on the way in and out. Keep every invoice: ITP, notary, registry, legal fees and documented improvement works are deductible, and buyers who have lost their paperwork routinely pay tax on gains they did not make.

The 3% retention. When a non-resident sells, the buyer is legally obliged to withhold 3% of the sale price and pay it directly to the tax office as an advance against the seller's capital gains liability. If your actual liability is lower, you reclaim the difference, but you have to file for it, and it takes months.

For further details on the buying process itself, see our complete buying guide, or tell us your budget through our contact page and we will send the actual IBI and community figures for anything you are considering.