Short-term property renting in Spain: licence, rules and costs
In 30 seconds
Three separate authorities must say yes before you can rent a Costa del Sol property to tourists: the region, through the VUT register, the town, and your community of owners, which can ban it outright with a three-fifths vote. The separate national advertising number was annulled by the Supreme Court in May 2026, so the regional VUT registration is the one that counts.
Who needs a VUT licence, and who does not?
VUT is the Andalusian tourist-rental licence, and without one a property cannot legally be rented to holiday guests. If any part of your plan involves nightly or weekly bookings through Airbnb, Booking.com, or a similar platform, you need a VUT licence, no matter how few weeks a year you plan to rent it. The only rentals outside this rule are long-term rentals with a minimum legal duration. That is a different set of rules, covered in a separate guide.The licence applies to the property and to the person who registers it, not to the whole building. Two identical apartments in the same block can have two different answers. This is because the third gate, the community vote, is decided per building, not per unit, and it can change after either owner bought their apartment. As of 17 August 2026, Andalusia manages the regional gate through the rewritten VUT (vivienda de uso turística) register, Decreto 31/2024 and Decreto-Ley 1/2025. Getting only one of the three approvals is the most common way a foreign buyer ends up owning a property they cannot legally rent out.
The three gates, in series
- The regionWho decidesJunta de Andalucía, VUT registerWhat it grantsThe regional licence to advertise the property at allIf noThe property cannot legally be rented to tourists, at any price, on any platform.
- The townWho decidesThe ayuntamiento’s own planning positionWhat it grantsNo municipal block on new registrations in that districtIf noSeveral coastal towns have paused new registrations in their busiest districts. A VUT number cannot be issued there, no matter what the property is like.
- The communityWho decidesA three-fifths vote of owners and quotasWhat it grantsPermission from the building, separate from the licenceIf noA valid VUT number and a willing town still cannot override a community vote against renting, since 3 April 2025.
Can I rent the property for just a few weeks a year without registering?No. There is no minimum-nights exemption from the registration requirement. Advertising even a single week without a VUT number and the matching national registration is the same offence as running the property full time. The fine is based on the activity, not on how much of the year it covered.
What does the habitability decree require inside the apartment?
The rewritten decree gives fixed rules, not suggestions. It lists minimum conditions a property must meet before a licence is granted. A listing photograph does not prove any of these conditions.
- Sleeping capacityA maximum of 4 people per bedroom, of whom no more than 2 on bunk-style beds, plus up to 2 more on a convertible sofa in the living room (Decreto 31/2024 + DL 1/2025, art. 6.1). The often-repeated "6 per bedroom" figure belongs to the old, repealed text.
- Climate controlAir conditioning from May to August and heating from December to March in every habitable room. Portable units are now explicitly allowed, which the old text did not permit (art. 6.1).
- Fixed inventoryA fixed list of required kitchen, bathroom and linen items, a smoke detector and a fire extinguisher, set out in an annex rather than left to judgement (Anexo).
- Operator dutiesA 24-hour contact phone number, cleaning between every stay, official complaint forms on the premises, an evacuation plan on the back of the door, and a receipt carrying the RTA code (art. 6.2).
- Urbanistic compatibilityThe declaración responsable filed to register the property must now state that the use is compatible with the local planning position, and a negative municipal report cancels the registration (Decreto-Ley 1/2025).
Position as of 17 August 2026, taken from our own verified reading of the rewritten decree rather than from a public guide still describing the repealed text. General information, not a substitute for your lawyer confirming the current wording against your specific property.
Does the community get a veto, separately from the licence?
Yes, and it is the gate most sellers do not mention. Since 3 April 2025, a community of owners can approve, limit, set conditions on, or ban tourist renting in the building. This needs a three-fifths majority of owners, representing three-fifths of the quotas. A property can hold a perfectly valid VUT number and still be one where the building bans renting. These two facts do not contradict each other, because they answer different questions.Arevont checks all three gates, the region, the town and the community, before you spend a euro on furniture, photography or a licence application. This is part of the rental-management service. The check is free, whether you go on to use the service or not. It is the single most useful thing to do before reserving a property you are partly buying to rent out.
Before you reserve
- Read the community statutes and the last two years of minutesThe three-fifths vote may already have happened, or be on the agenda of a meeting nobody has told you about.
- Where
- Requested from the seller or the community administrator.
- Watch out
- "The usual rules apply" is not an answer. Each community votes its own position.
- Check the town’s current planning positionSeveral Costa del Sol municipalities have paused new tourist-rental registrations in their busiest districts.
- Where
- The town hall planning office.
- Watch out
- An answer that is a year old, or from a neighbouring town, is not the same answer.
- Get the free three-gate check before spending on furnitureArevont checks the region, the town and the community together and gives a written answer.
- Where
- Rental-management service, free either way.
If a neighbour in my building already rents out their apartment, does that mean I can too?Not automatically. A vote that has never been called is not the same as a vote that said yes. An owner who was already renting before 3 April 2025 keeps a position that a new registration does not inherit. Read the statutes and the last two years of minutes before you assume a neighbour’s practice applies to your unit.
What does it cost to comply, before the first guest?
Three costs sit between an empty apartment and a legal listing, and none of them is the licence fee.
| Furnishing to the decree, not to your own tasterental-grade to mid-range package, published supplier prices | 4 500 to 26 000 € |
|---|---|
| The registrationfiled by your lawyer against existing habitability paperwork | Included in the legal fee |
| The national advertising numberannulled by the Supreme Court in May 2026; only the regional VUT code applies | No longer required |
None of these three costs appears on a sale listing, and none of them is optional if the property is really going to earn as a short-term rental.
What to confirm before you spend on furniture or photography
Five checks, in this order, because the first two decide whether the rest is worth doing at all.| Confirm | Why it decides the answer | What a bad answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| The community statutes and the last two years of minutes | The 3/5 vote may already have happened, or be on the agenda of a meeting nobody has told you about. | "The usual rules apply." There is no usual; each community votes its own position. |
| Whether the town has restricted new registrations | Several Costa del Sol municipalities have tightened the rules for new tourist rentals in their busiest districts, per town and sometimes per district. | An answer that is a year old, or from a neighbouring town. |
| The occupation and habitability paperwork | A property cannot be registered without the documents that say it is legally habitable, and on an older resale property they are occasionally missing entirely. | An assurance from the seller instead of the actual certificate. |
| The sleeping capacity the layout can hold under the decree | Capacity decides income more than the nightly rate does, and the 4-per-bedroom cap is stricter than most brochures assume. | A capacity claim based on the old repealed text. |
| Whether a VUT registered before you owned it still transfers as claimed | Sellers routinely assume a registration survives a change of ownership automatically. It is not always true. | "It already has a licence" with no document confirming what transfers and what has to be refiled. |
Licensable on paper, and legally rentable in practice, are two different questions
The same property, checked alone versus checked with Arevont before you commit.| Checked alone | Checked with Arevont | |
|---|---|---|
| The regional VUT registration | Confirmed available. Says nothing about the other two gates. | Confirmed available, and checked against what the community and the town separately allow. |
| The community vote | Assumed from a neighbour’s practice, or from what the selling agent says. | Read in the statutes and the actual minutes, dated, before the reservation. |
| The furniture spend | Bought first, checked against the inventory annex afterwards. | Budgeted against the decree’s requirements before a euro is spent. |
| The outcome if one gate says no | Discovered after the licence application, the furniture and the photography. | Discovered before the reservation, when walking away costs nothing. |
What only a local check can tell you about your specific apartment
This is general information about the rewritten Andalusian decree and the community-vote rule, current as of 17 August 2026. We read it ourselves, rather than copying it from a public guide still describing the old text. It is not legal advice about your building. Rules differ by municipality and change over time. A lawyer confirms the current position for a specific property before you spend anything on it.One earlier open question is now settled: the Supreme Court annulled the national Registro Único advertising-number requirement in May 2026 (STS 620/2026, confirmed via the judiciary's own portal), because the state exceeded its competence. The Andalusian VUT registration is unaffected and remains the registration that matters. Ask your lawyer if you registered under the national scheme in 2025 and want to know what to do with that number.No occupancy rate, no nightly rate and no income figure appears anywhere above. What a property earns is a market question, answered on a separate guide. That is a different question from whether the property may legally be rented at all, which is the only question this page answers.
Most common questions about short-term renting
- Does buying a new build guarantee the community will allow tourist renting?
- No. On a new build, there may be no minutes to read yet, because the community has not met. The statutes are still the developer’s draft. Ask the developer directly, in writing, whether renting was allowed for in the community rules, before you complete. The first vote after handover can go either way.
- What happens if I rent without a VUT number?
- The advertised listing is the evidence, and inspectors do not have to identify themselves before checking. Penalties scale with the offence, and enforcement against renting without registration has grown sharply since the 2024 to 2025 rewrite, with more than 15.300 registrations cancelled in Andalusia since 2024. Platforms also remove unregistered listings once a regional or national number is required and missing.
- Can the community change its mind after voting yes?
- A community can vote again, in either direction, at a later meeting. What protects an owner who is already renting legally is the non-retroactive wording of the 2025 amendment, not a permanent guarantee that today’s vote survives every future one.
- Is a villa outside a community easier to license than an apartment?
- The community gate disappears, which removes one of the three layers. The regional and municipal gates still apply in full, and a standalone villa still has to meet the same habitability decree, inventory and capacity rules as an apartment inside a block.
