New construction properties in Spain

Property prices depend on many factors, location, type, year of construction, etc. According to TINSA, one of the leading independent valuation companies in Spain, the overall average house price is 1,479 euros per square meter. The most expensive housing in Spain is located in San Sebastian, a resort town on the Bay of Biscay in the mountainous Basque community at a price of 3,383 euros per square meter. Barcelona is the second with an average price of 3,380 euros. One of the most inexpensive is the Costa Blanca. The average property price is around 130,000 euros.

Spain has some of the lowest property taxes in Europe. The obligation to pay taxes comes at three different stages: when buying, owning, selling and reselling a property, which you can find out more about here. The main tax - the property ownership tax (IBI) - is levied on the property regardless of whether the owner is resident or not. It is determined on the basis of the cadastral value set by the Town Hall and the tax rate ranges from 0.4% to 1.1% depending on the region of Spain.

You can automatically obtain a residence permit in Spain when you buy a property worth over €500,000. This visa does not require you to live in Spain with a minimum stay and gives you many benefits such as visa-free entry to 26 Schengen countries and the opportunity to open a business in Barcelona on a privileged basis, such as access to the European market, Latin American and North African markets.

Once your offer has been accepted, your lawyer will check all the legal aspects of the property and draw up a sale and purchase agreement setting out the terms of the purchase. Once these have been agreed, both parties sign the contract and you, as the buyer, pay a deposit (usually 10% of the stated value). The completion date is when both parties (or their legal representatives) visit the notary's office to sign the title deeds. Once this is done, you will receive the title deeds and can take full possession of the property. Then the property is registered in your name at the Real Estate Registry Office, which takes about a month.

In addition to conventional mortgages, Spain also offers specialized mortgages for foreign nationals. Many Spanish mortgages have no restrictions on the purchase price or the nationality of the applicant (residency), although some are designed for buyers from certain countries or for property purchases in certain regions. The biggest difference between lending to residents and non-residents is the maximum loan size allowed. Residents can usually borrow up to 80 per cent of the appraised value of the property, while non-residents are limited to 60 to 70 per cent, depending on the type of mortgage.

Mostly, property in Spain is bought by residents of Northern Europe to enjoy the sunny warmth and healing breeze of the Mediterranean Sea. So, most foreigners buy property near the coast. Foreign buyers are practically not represented in the market in the northern and western provinces of Spain. The highest proportion of foreign property buyers fall on the province of Alicante in the Valencia region, on the Costa Blanca. This is one of the most inexpensive province for the purchase of property by the sea in Spain. Next comes the province of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, followed by Malaga on the Costa del Sol, the Balearic Islands and Girona with the famous Costa Brava of Catalonia.