Holiday-Let Licences in the Valencia Region

If you are buying on the Costa Blanca with holiday letting in mind, this is the article to read before you make an offer, not after. Letting a property to tourists in the Valencia region is regulated, the regulation has tightened in recent years, and the permission most owners overlook is not the government's. It is their neighbours'.

What follows is the general shape of the requirements. Rules are updated regularly and applied differently by different town halls, so treat this as orientation and take formal advice on the specific property before you commit. We deliberately do not quote fine amounts or article numbers here, because those are exactly the details that change and that you should verify against the current regulation rather than a blog post.

The registration

A dwelling let to tourists in the Valencia region is a vivienda de uso turístico and must be entered in the regional tourism registry. Registration produces a reference number, and that number has to appear in your advertising: on the portal listing, on your own site, wherever the property is offered. Platforms increasingly check for it, and an unregistered listing is an easy enforcement target precisely because it is public.

Registrations are also no longer treated as permanent grants in the way older ones sometimes were. Expect the registration to be time-limited and to need renewal, and expect the authority to be able to cancel it. Build that into your assumptions if you are underwriting a purchase on letting income.

The town hall compatibility report

Before the regional registration can proceed you generally need a municipal document confirming that tourist use is urbanistically compatible at that address. This is the informe de compatibilidad urbanística, or its local equivalent under whatever name your ayuntamiento uses.

This is where properties fail. Municipalities on this coast have taken very different positions on tourist accommodation, and some have restricted it in particular zones, in particular building types, or above particular floors. Two identical flats in two neighbouring towns can get different answers. Ask the town hall about the specific address, not the town in general.

The permission owners forget: the community

If the property sits in a comunidad de propietarios, which almost every apartment on the Costa Blanca does, the community's own rules now carry real weight. Spanish law has been reformed to let a community, by qualified majority, adopt resolutions restricting or prohibiting tourist letting within the building, and to require express community consent for new tourist-use registrations.

The practical consequences are three. First, read the community statutes and the minutes of recent general meetings before you buy, not after. A resolution against tourist letting may already be on the books. Second, a community that has not yet voted could vote later. Third, an existing registration attached to a property is worth checking carefully; do not assume it transfers or survives.

The one structure this cannot reach is a property with no community at all. Of our 2,108 live listings, 251 advertise no community fees, typically a detached or semi-detached house on its own plot, with no comunidad and therefore no neighbours' vote to lose. That is a small fraction of the market, and it is the reason detached stock is disproportionately popular with buyers whose plan depends on letting.

Where the tourist-let stock sits

We hold no booking data and publish no occupancy or yield figures. Anyone who quotes you one for a property you have not yet bought is guessing. What the table does show is where the accessible stock is. Torrevieja has both the depth and the lowest entry point, at €89,900; Benidorm's median of €1,450,000 makes it a different proposition entirely.

The order of operations

Do it in this sequence and you will not waste money. One: before offering, ask the town hall whether tourist use is compatible at the address. Two: obtain and read the community statutes and the last two or three years of general-meeting minutes, looking specifically for any resolution on tourist letting. Three: if the seller claims an existing registration, verify it and establish in writing what happens to it on transfer. Four: only then instruct your lawyer to proceed, with the licence position written into the contract as a condition where possible. Five: after completion, register, and put the number in every advert.

If any of those steps returns a no, that is useful information at the offer stage and an expensive discovery afterwards.

Or let us handle it

We manage properties on this coast and deal with the paperwork side of letting every week. If you own something already and want to know whether it can be let legally, or you are buying and want the licence position checked before you commit, put it in front of us at list your property.

To see how holiday stock is presented, browse our holiday rentals, and for the year-round alternative see long-term rentals. Current sale stock in the two towns above is at Torrevieja and Calpe.

Tell us the address and your budget below and we will tell you honestly what the letting position looks like before you spend anything on it.