New Law for Holiday Rentals : INSPECTIONS

Inspections from the Tourism Department!

(The following information is aimed to assist our clients that have used our firm to register their properties as holiday rental homes in the Costa del Sol, pursuant to Decree 28/2016, of February 2nd, on dwellings for tourism purposes from the Junta de Andalucia)

The Tourist Inspection Department of the Junta de Andalucía is contacting the people who have registered their properties as holiday rental homes to arrange viewings of their aforementioned properties in order to:

Check that the property complies with all the requirements determined by law.
Check that the relevant documentation is in place.

As to their requirements for the property, you can find a full list here: https://bravolegal.es/the-new-law-for-holiday-rentals-i/. We recommend you double check that your property has everything listed there.

At this point, it is very important to stress that that when you receive the Registry Number from the Junta de Andalucia, the license is subject to the inspection that at some point will be carried out by the Tourist inspectors. In other words, you can manage to register your property and obtain a registry number, but that doesn’t mean that your property has been definitively approved for its use as a holiday home until it had passed the inspection. This explains why some people have managed to register their properties even when they don’t comply with all the requirements.

Listed are the documents the inspector requests to see:

First Occupation License. (F.O.L.) This might be the biggest issue here. If you don’t have this document, the first person to contact is the lawyer who assisted you with the purchase. If they don’t have it, and they don’t suggest any alternative, then the second option is to contact the administrator of your community of owners. If neither of these lead you to the F.O.L., and depending of the location of your property , you may apply for an “equivalent” certificate, valid for this purpose only, from your local Town Hall. Unfortunately this certificate is not suitable for all properties without F.O.L. and certainly not for properties in Marbella and Mijas as these Town Halls are not providing any equivalent certificate. Please be aware that failure to have the First Occupation License of a property registered as holiday home may lead to substantial fines so this is a something that you need to look out for seriously.
Copy of your title deeds (“escritura”). This is the document that you or your lawyer signed before the notary when the property was bought. If you don’t have it, you need to find it. You should start by contacting the lawyer who represented you in the purchase. Please note, that even if you bought with a mortgage, you will still be required to have the original title deeds (although a copy will be enough for this purpose).
Copy of property tax receipt or other official document containing the cadastral reference of the property. This is the tax that you paid to your local Town Hall (or the “Patronato de Recaudacion” if your property is in Marbella). If you pay this by direct debit, you may still be able to obtain a receipt from your bank. If you can’t find this, we can provide you with a document that should be enough. Please contact us if this is the case.
Proof of registration with the local National Police (or Guardia Civl if the property is in Mijas) .
Power of attorney. If the “declaracion responsable” was not signed by you, but by a lawyer or anybody else, you will need to produce a copy of the Power of Attorney. In our case, we filed a copy of this with every application, but it seems that the inspector is asking for this anyway. If you signed a Power of Attorney in the Notary in our favour, please contact us and we will send you a copy.
If it is not the owner who is attending to the inspection, but a property agent, etc, he will need to produce an authorisation signed by the owner and a copy of his/her id.

These 6 documents should be available in the property for inspection. Don’t wait to receive the call from the inspector. You should start to prepare these documents now, as it might take some time to get them all.

Finally, what we at Bravo Legal can do for you with regards to this inspection:

At no cost to you:

We can advise you as soon as we receive the inspection request (if our contact details were indicated in the “Declaracion Responsible”), and we will help you to arrange the meeting with the inspector.
We can provide you with a copy of our Power of Attorney.
We can provide you with a document with the “Referencia Catastral” of your property, in case you can’t find an IBI receipt (Property Tax).

For a fee:

We can apply for a Certificate equivalent to the First Occupation License when applicable (depending of the characteristics and location of your property). This will involve some considerable costs (surveyor’s fees, Town Hall fees and our fees). Please contact us for more information if you need help with this.

What we CANNOT do for you. We cannot attend the inspection of your property. This is something that you must do yourself or with the help of your property management agent. (the inspector speaks fluent English, so language won’t be a problem).

We hope that you have found this information useful and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need any further information.