Is the house you're buying in Spain legally a home? How to check before paying a deposit

You find a villa with a pool, three bedrooms and sea views. The listing says house, the agent says house, you have viewed it. But in the official records it may not be a home at all. It happens more often than most foreign buyers think, and it is easy to check before you pay anything.

A real case on the Costa Blanca

This October a British buyer ran a Hogarfax report on a 1980s villa on the northern Costa Blanca, listed at under €500,000 as a three-bedroom house with a pool and a separate apartment. The report flagged it in red: in the Cadastre the property's main use is “Sports”, and none of its constructions is recorded as a dwelling. Its parts are a storeroom, a garage, a porch and two items with a sports code, one of them about 100 m² on the upper floor. The details are changed to protect the buyer.

A swimming pool normally appears in the Cadastre with a sports code. What is unusual is that there is no dwelling at all. That can be a recording error, easy to correct, or a house that was built or converted without ever being legalised as a home. The Cadastre alone cannot tell you which.

What “cadastral use” is and where to see it

Every property in Spain has a cadastral reference (20 characters) and a main use: residential, storage-parking, industrial, offices, commercial, sports, leisure and hospitality, agricultural and others. It is shown in the public record of the Cadastre's electronic office (Sede Electrónica del Catastro), together with each construction on the plot and its area. For a home you expect Residential, and among the constructions at least one line marked dwelling.

Watch out for three patterns: a house recorded as storage or agricultural (a country hut turned into a home), a ground-floor flat recorded as commercial (a former shop), and a villa recorded as sports or leisure, as in the case above.

What it can affect

• The mortgage. Banks value the property with an official appraisal (Orden ECO/805/2003), and the appraiser checks the Land Registry and the Cadastre. If the legal use is not residential, the valuation may come with conditions or a lower value, and the bank may lend less.
• Connecting utilities. In the Valencia region, a new water, electricity or gas contract for an existing home without an occupancy document requires a declaración responsable of second occupancy (Decreto 12/2021). If the property is not a legal home, that declaration may not be possible.
• Property tax (IBI). The cadastral value depends on the type of construction, so the IBI can change once the record is corrected.
• Resale. The next buyer, and their bank, will find the same issue.

Some fears you will read online are not true: the town hall cannot refuse to register you on the padrón just because the home has no occupancy licence; the padrón records where you actually live.

Three checks before paying a deposit

• Request the nota simple. It is the Land Registry extract, and it says how the Registry describes the property: “vivienda unifamiliar”, “almacén”, land… The Cadastre record often shows a unique registry code (CRU) you can use to request it.
• Ask the town hall. Ask the planning department whether there is a building licence and an occupancy licence (or declaration) for residential use, and whether planning allows a home on that plot. If it does not, the house may never be legalised.
• Put it in the contract. Make the deposit (arras) conditional on the seller proving the residential use, or correcting the Cadastre if it is only a recording error. Filing a cadastral declaration is free.

How Hogarfax helps

The Hogarfax report checks the cadastral use of the property and of every construction on the plot, and flags in red a home for sale with a non-residential use, together with more than 30 other checks: flood zones, planning classification, the real square metres against the listing, a valuation against nearby sales, nuisances around it and what buying it will really cost. If you want the nota simple too, our Land Registry Study requests it for you and explains it in your report.