Selling a property you inherited in Spain

You don’t have to navigate a Spanish property sale in another language — that’s our job. Once the property is in the heirs’ names, selling it is the last step, and we see it through from the buyer’s offer to the money in your account.

If the property is not yet in the heirs’ names, that comes first — see registering inherited property (or our full succession administration service) — and we can roll straight into the sale afterwards.

For families whose Spanish estate we have already settled, the sale is seamless — we already hold the property documents, the power of attorney and the completed registration, so there is nothing to gather again and the sale proceeds without delay. The same lawyer who settled the estate handles the sale.

A single fixed fee for the whole sale, agreed in writing before we start — never an hourly meter, and never a percentage of the sale price. A percentage is what an estate agent charges; our work is a defined piece of legal work, so we price it as one clear figure. The fee depends only on the value of the property, and there is a lower fee where we have already settled the estate for you.

All fees + VAT. The “where we settled the estate” column is the lower fee that applies when we have already administered the estate for you — the documents, the power of attorney and the completed registration are already in hand, so there is less to do.

If the property still carries a mortgage or other charge, redeeming it and lifting it from the title at completion is a defined extra step — a fixed €350 + VAT add-on, agreed in advance. Nothing is open-ended: where there is more to a sale than the standard case, we tell you the fixed figure before you instruct us.

Disbursements are separate and never folded into our fee. These are the official, third-party costs of a Spanish sale — chiefly the notary’s fee for the deed (escritura), the energy-performance certificate (certificado de eficiencia energética) the law requires before a home can be marketed, and the Registro de la Propiedad update — each payable to the provider, not to us, and each shown to you up front so there are no surprises.

Two things to plan for on tax — separate from our fee. First, where the seller is not resident in Spain, the buyer must withhold 3% of the price (the retención) and pay it to the Spanish tax office on account of the seller’s capital-gains tax — the gain itself is taxed at a flat 19% for non-resident sellers, wherever they live, and the retention is then reconciled against it: a top-up where more is due, a refund where the 3% was too much — and for an inherited property the gain is often modest because the value is effectively reset at the date of death. Second, the plusvalía municipal, a town-hall tax on the increase in the land’s value, is due on the sale. (In an inherit-then-sell sequence the plusvalía actually falls due twice — once on inheriting, once on selling for the period since the death; sold soon after, the second bill is usually small.) Both are tax costs, not our fee, and they come out of the sale proceeds, so they are worth knowing about early. These are different taxes from the succession tax we handle, and not ones we advise on — we flag them clearly and point you to a suitable tax adviser. The four-country picture is in the tax picture before you list.

VAT is charged at the Spanish rate (currently 21%) and always shown separately, so our fee is clear.

Timing depends mostly on finding a buyer — that part is in the hands of the market and your agent. Once a buyer is found, the deposit contract (contrato de arras) fixes the timetable to completion; a period of a few weeks to a couple of months from the deposit contract to the deed (escritura) is common, and can be set shorter by agreement between the parties. Where we have already settled the estate and hold the documents, the legal side is ready without delay, so the timing is driven by the contract rather than by paperwork. We act under your power of attorney throughout, so you do not need to travel for the deed.