The Seller's Companion · Costa Blanca South
An honest, plain-English walk through every stage of a Spanish sale, from the first cushion you plump to the last euro of tax you settle. Written by a local agency that relocated here ourselves, for owners ready to sell well.
A word before we start
Colin and Debra moved to the Costa Blanca the same way most of our clients arrive: full of hope, slightly overwhelmed, and unsure who to trust. That experience shaped everything about how Sunshine Homes works. Over the years we have learned exactly what makes a home sell quickly and for a fair price, and what quietly drives buyers away. When you sell with us, that knowledge is on your side of the table.
This guide hands that knowledge back to you. There is no pressure here and no sales pitch buried in the footnotes. Just the honest version of how a sale really works in Spain, including the tax that catches so many sellers by surprise. Read it at your own pace, and use what is useful.
The Sunshine Homes TeamCiudad Quesada · Costa Blanca South
The single biggest mistake a seller makes is falling in love with a number. The price your neighbour got two years ago, or the figure you need to fund your next move, has nothing to do with what a buyer will pay today. Start with the market as it is, not as you wish it were.
On the Costa Blanca South, buyers are mostly British, Irish and Northern European, and they are comparing your home against new builds and dozens of resales in the same few resorts. A realistic asking price gets you viewings in the first fortnight, which is when interest is highest. Overprice, and the listing goes stale while better-priced homes sell around it.
Staging here is not about expensive furniture. It is about helping a buyer picture their own life in the space, in the Spanish light.
Honest caveat
You will not recoup a full renovation in the sale price. Focus spending on cleanliness, light and first impressions. A deep clean and a coat of paint return far more than a new kitchen ever will.
Almost every buyer meets your home on a screen first. The photographs and video are your shop window, and on portals like thinkSPAIN, Kyero and idealista they decide in a heartbeat whether to click or scroll past. This is the part you can hand straight to us.
When you sell with Sunshine Homes, we take care of all of it: professional, bright, wide-composed photography and walkthrough video, shot to show your home in its best Costa Blanca light. You do not need to wrestle with angles or worry about gloomy phone snaps. Your only job is to have the home looking its best on the day, and we handle the rest.
Here is what we are aiming for, so you know what good looks like:
Sellers often budget only for the agent and then meet a string of smaller costs at completion. Knowing them now means your net figure holds no nasty surprises.
The headline cost is estate agency commission, typically charged to the seller. Beyond that sit your conveyancing fees, the plusvalía land tax, any mortgage cancellation costs, and the tax on your gain. We cover the two big tax items in their own chapters because they deserve the space.
A word on lawyers
We always recommend instructing a qualified, independent Spanish lawyer for a sale. Good conveyancing is not where to economise. It is the difference between a clean completion and weeks of avoidable stress.
A sale stalls most often because paperwork is missing, not because a buyer changes their mind. Pull your documents together before you list, and you keep the momentum when an offer lands.
Spanish law requires an Energy Performance Certificate as part of selling a home, and it must be in place before completion at the notary. A registered technician assesses the property and issues a rating, which the buyer's lawyer will want to see as part of the sale.
It is inexpensive and quick to arrange, but skipping it can hold up a sale or invite a fine. While you are at it, confirm the registered description of the property matches reality. Unregistered extensions, closed-in terraces or a pool that never made it onto the deeds are common, and far easier to resolve before a buyer's lawyer raises them.
Why it matters
Buyers from the UK and Northern Europe increasingly weigh running costs. A better energy rating, and honesty about what the home actually costs to run, builds trust and shortens the path to an offer.
A good agent does far more than put your home on a portal. They price it correctly, qualify the buyers who come through the door, and steer a delicate negotiation to a clean close. On the Costa Blanca, where so many sales involve overseas buyers, that coordination is everything.
Ask any agent how they will market the home, which portals they use, and how they handle viewings for buyers who may be abroad. Be wary of anyone who flatters your price to win the listing, then pushes for reductions a month later. An honest valuation up front serves you far better.
When an offer arrives, the headline figure is only part of the story. A slightly lower offer from a proceedable, cash-ready buyer can be worth far more than a higher one that depends on selling a home in another country first.
Once you agree terms, the buyer usually pays a reservation deposit to take the home off the market, followed by a private purchase contract (the contrato de arras) with a larger deposit. From there your lawyers drive towards the notary. Stay responsive, keep your paperwork to hand, and the weeks between offer and completion pass smoothly.
Honest caveat
Under a typical arras deposit arrangement, if the buyer pulls out they generally forfeit the deposit, but if you the seller withdraw, you may owe double it back. Have your lawyer explain the exact terms before you sign.
A question we are asked constantly: is plusvalía still a thing, or is it just capital gains tax now? The answer is that yes, it is very much still a separate, live tax in 2026. It was never abolished and it has not merged into capital gains tax. What changed is the way it is worked out, after Spain's Constitutional Court struck down the old formula in late 2021. Selling a home here can therefore trigger two separate taxes, and plusvalía is the one sellers most often forget.
Plusvalía is a municipal tax, levied by the town hall, on the increase in the value of the land your property sits on over the years you owned it. It is entirely separate from the national tax on your overall gain. The amount is calculated by the local council using the cadastral land value and how long you held the property, so it varies from town to town, and from Torrevieja to Orihuela Costa to Rojales it can differ noticeably.
Since the ruling, two things work in the seller's favour. First, you can choose between two calculation methods, the objective method based on cadastral coefficients and the real-gain method based on the actual rise in land value, and use whichever produces the lower bill. Second, the "no gain, no tax" principle now applies.
A useful overlap with capital gains
Plusvalía and capital gains tax are settled separately and you cannot simply subtract one from the other. However, the plusvalía you pay can usually be counted as a documented selling cost when working out your capital gain, which slightly reduces your capital gains bill. Keep the receipt and ask your adviser to include it.
Two practical points
Plusvalía is normally paid by the seller and is usually due within around 30 days of the sale, so your lawyer or gestor handles it promptly. Note that when the seller is a non-resident, the buyer can be held responsible for ensuring the tax is paid, which is one more reason it gets settled cleanly at completion.
This is the tax that surprises the most sellers, so it is worth slowing down. Capital gains tax in Spain applies to the profit you make on the sale, never the full sale price. The profit is broadly your sale price, less your original purchase price, less the allowable costs you can prove. How that profit is then taxed depends entirely on whether you are a Spanish tax resident or a non-resident.
The starting formula is the same for everyone. The art, and the saving, lies in capturing every allowable cost on both the buying and the selling side.
The core formula
Taxable gain = Sale price − (Purchase price + allowable acquisition costs + documented improvements + selling costs)
You may add genuine, invoiced costs to your acquisition value and deduct genuine selling costs, which reduces the taxable gain. The golden rule from the Spanish tax agency is simple: no invoice, no deduction. Keep every receipt.
If you are a Spanish tax resident, the gain is added to your savings income and taxed on a progressive scale. As of the rules in force for 2026 filings, the bands run as follows. These are marginal: each rate applies only to the slice of gain that falls within its band.
| Slice of gain | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to €6,000 | 19% |
| €6,000 to €50,000 | 21% |
| €50,000 to €200,000 | 23% |
| €200,000 to €300,000 | 27% |
| Over €300,000 | 28% |
Valuable resident reliefs
Main residence reinvestment. Sell your main home (vivienda habitual) and reinvest the proceeds into another main home, generally within two years, and the gain can be exempt in full or in proportion to what you reinvest. The intention to reinvest must be declared correctly on your return.
Over-65 exemption. A resident aged 65 or over selling their main residence is fully exempt from the gain, with no need to reinvest. This relief does not extend to non-residents.
Losses. Residents can offset capital losses against gains and carry excess losses forward for several years.
If you are not a Spanish tax resident, the gain falls under non-resident income tax and is taxed at a flat 19% on property sale gains. Since Brexit this 19% applies to UK sellers exactly as it does to EU and EEA residents. The commonly quoted 24% is the general non-resident rate for other Spanish income such as rental, and is not the rate used on a property sale gain.
Non-residents declare the gain on Modelo 210, generally within four months of the sale. The over-65 and main-residence reliefs above are for residents only, though double tax treaties with the UK and others ensure you are not taxed twice in full on the same gain.
Worked example one · Non-resident
Illustration only. Notice how the allowable costs cut the gain from a headline €120,000 down to €58,000, more than halving the tax. This is why receipts matter. Plusvalía is separate and additional.
Worked example two · Resident
Illustration only, and assuming no reinvestment or over-65 relief applies. A resident with no relief pays a little more here than the flat 19%, but reinvesting into a new main home, or being over 65, could reduce this to zero.
Please read this
These figures are illustrations to show how the mechanics work, not advice for your situation. Tax in Spain is genuinely complex, and small details change the outcome. Always have a qualified Spanish lawyer or tax adviser run your actual numbers before you sell.
If you are a non-resident seller, there is one more mechanic to understand, and it affects how much cash you actually walk away with on the day. By law, the buyer must withhold 3% of the sale price and pay it directly to the Spanish tax agency as an advance against your capital gains tax. You do not receive that slice at completion.
The buyer files this retention on Modelo 211 and gives you proof. You then file Modelo 210 within four months to declare the real gain. If your actual tax is more than the 3% withheld, you pay the difference. If it is less, or you made no gain at all, you reclaim the overpaid amount back from the tax agency.
The 3% retention in numbers
Here the retention nearly covered the bill, leaving a small balance to settle. Had the actual tax been lower than €10,500, the difference would have been refundable instead. Refund timelines vary with the tax agency's workload.
Residents note
The 3% retention applies to non-resident sellers. If you are a Spanish tax resident, no retention is taken on sale. You instead declare the gain in your annual Renta return the following spring, with the option to split the payment.
Plenty of our clients own just over the regional border, in the Murcia towns of the Costa Cálida: Los Alcázares, Santa Rosalía, Condado de Alhama, the Mar Menor resorts. If that is you, the good news is that almost everything in this guide applies unchanged. The taxes that matter most to a seller are national, so they do not move when you cross from the Valencian Community into Murcia.
Capital gains tax is set by the national government, not the region. So the flat 19% for non-residents, the resident savings scale, the reliefs, and the 3% retention all work exactly the same whether your home is in Rojales or in Los Alcázares. The worked examples earlier in this guide hold either side of the border.
Costa Blanca South
Non-resident capital gains, plus the 3% retention and resident savings scale. All national.
Plusvalía set by each town hall: Torrevieja, Orihuela, Rojales, Guardamar and others.
Costa Cálida
Identical. The same national capital gains tax, retention and reliefs apply, with no regional difference for the seller.
Plusvalía set by each Murcia town hall: Los Alcázares, Alhama de Murcia, San Javier and others.
The one genuine regional difference, the transfer tax (ITP), is paid by your buyer, not by you, so it does not touch your net proceeds. For interest, it sits at around 8% in the Valencian Community and around 7.5% in Murcia for most resale purchases, which can make a Murcia home marginally cheaper for a buyer to acquire. New builds are different again, taxed with IVA plus stamp duty rather than ITP.
The practical takeaway
Wherever you sit on the Costa Blanca South or the Costa Cálida, your seller tax position is essentially the same. The only figure that truly varies town to town is plusvalía, because it is municipal. Ask us, or your lawyer, for a plusvalía estimate specific to your own town hall before you sell.
Completion happens at the notary, where you and the buyer sign the new title deed, the funds change hands, and the keys pass over. With your paperwork ready and your lawyer steering, this final step is the calmest part of the whole journey.
In the days around it, your lawyer settles the plusvalía, the retention is filed if you are a non-resident, and utility contracts transfer to the new owner. Then it is done. You have sold your Costa Blanca home, you know exactly where every euro went, and nothing arrived as a surprise. That is the whole point of preparing early.
Keep this handy
Thinking of selling?
If you would like an honest view on what your home might fetch, and a clear picture of your costs and tax before you commit to anything, we are happy to talk. We are local, we relocated here ourselves, and we know exactly what makes a Costa Blanca home sell.