Spain's September Rental Shake-Up: What Landlords Lose

If you let a property in Spain, you have probably read that the rules change in September. They might. At the time of writing — 23 August 2026 — none of it is law: the government aims to pass a package of housing measures in September 2026, including a substantial reform of the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos (LAU). Everything set out below is a proposal, and proposals get amended, delayed and dropped.

What is reported to be in the package

The measures that have been briefed would change the economics of letting more than the mechanics of it. The main ones reported:

• Landlords would pay IBI (Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles) themselves and could no longer pass it on to the tenant.
• Landlords could no longer require a tenant to take out rent-default insurance (seguro de impago de alquiler) or an equivalent guarantee.
• Short-term tourist lets of up to 30 nights, in municipalities of more than 10,000 inhabitants, would lose their VAT exemption and be taxed at the standard 21% rate.
• Temporary and seasonal lets would be limited.
• Letting individual rooms would be reclassified as a traditional rental.
• Many contracts would carry mandatory extensions.
• Tenants would be able to deduct the cost of repairs from the rent.
• Tenants in a vulnerable situation could not be evicted until alternative housing is available.

Read that as a direction of travel rather than a rulebook. None of it binds you today, and the final text may differ from what has been reported. A gestoría or a property lawyer is the right person to tell you how the version that actually passes applies to your own contracts.

The IBI change is a straight cost transfer

Passing IBI to the tenant by a clause in the contract is common practice in Spain, particularly on longer agreements. If that becomes unlawful, the bill does not shrink — it simply lands on the owner and stays there. The only route to recovering it would be the headline rent, which other measures in the same package would make harder to move.

Non-resident owners tend to feel this one most, because IBI is a fixed annual cost that does not flex with occupancy. Worth checking now what your current contracts actually say, and when each one comes up for renewal.

Why the rent-default ban matters more than it looks

Today, requiring a tenant to buy impago de alquiler cover does two jobs at once. It protects the rent, and it outsources tenant vetting: the insurer underwrites the applicant's income and employment, and if the tenant cannot get cover, you have learned something useful before you hand over the keys.

Ban the requirement and both jobs come back to you. The protection does not disappear, but it moves onto your side of the ledger — you buy the cover yourself as part of your own landlord policy, and you pay the premium. Rent-default cover is commonly priced as a percentage of the annual rent, often somewhere around 3% to 5%, and insurers typically still apply their own tenant-screening conditions before they will accept the risk. Those are indicative figures, not a quote.

Legal expenses do the unglamorous work

The part of a landlord policy that earns its keep in a bad year is usually defensa jurídica — legal expenses cover. It funds the lawyer and procurador needed to bring a non-payment claim, which is otherwise a bill you carry yourself while receiving no rent.

Alongside it, look for:

• Malicious or wilful damage caused by a tenant, which most standard household policies exclude outright.
• Continuation of rent while a claim runs, usually capped at a set number of monthly payments.
• Lock replacement and making good after a property is recovered.

Every one of those comes with limits, waiting periods and conditions about how the tenant was referenced. Read the wording rather than the summary.

The 21% VAT proposal changes the sums on a holiday let

Short residential letting is currently exempt from VAT. If the proposal passes as reported, tourist lets of up to 30 nights in municipalities above 10,000 inhabitants would be taxed at 21% — which means either absorbing the charge or raising prices in a market where guests compare on total cost. It would also bring VAT registration and periodic filing into what may have been a fairly simple tax position.

Again: proposal, not law, at the time of writing. If you run a holiday-let property at any scale, this is the item to ask your gestoría about the week the final text is published.

The NRA registry is gone — your regional licence is not

One thing here is settled rather than proposed. The state rental registration number (NRA), created by Royal Decree 1312/2024, was annulled by the Supreme Court on 21 May 2026 and is no longer required.

That is easy to over-read. Regional and municipal tourist-licence rules are untouched, still apply, vary considerably between regions, and are enforced with very different levels of enthusiasm. Insurers writing holiday-let cover often ask for evidence that the property is properly registered locally, and a policy taken out on the basis of an inaccurate declaration is a weak thing to hold when you claim.

A standard home policy usually stops working the day you let

This is the failure that catches people who drift into letting rather than deciding to. A household policy is priced on the assumption that the owner lives there. Letting changes who is in the building, how often, how carefully, and what they are doing there — which is a change in the risk the insurer agreed to carry. Where that change is not declared, the insurer can reduce a settlement or decline it altogether.

Long lets and holiday lets are then two different products:

• A long-let policy assumes one known household in place for months or years, with the emphasis on rent default, legal expenses and tenant damage.
• A holiday-let policy assumes a stream of strangers, short gaps of unoccupancy between bookings, higher public liability exposure, and accidental damage by guests.

Selling one as the other is how claims get refused. If your use of the property is about to change, tell the insurer before it does, not afterwards.

What is worth doing before September

• Find your current contracts and check what they say about who pays IBI.
• Check whether your rent protection is a policy the tenant bought — if so, it is not yours, and it may not be renewable on the same terms.
• Ask your insurer or broker what it would cost to add rent-default and legal expenses cover to your own landlord insurance.
• Confirm your regional and municipal licence position with a gestoría, separately from the annulled NRA.
• Wait for the published text before rewriting anything.

The single most useful thing you can do this month is pull out your policy schedule and establish whose name the rent-default cover is in — yours or your tenant's. That one answer tells you how exposed you are if the package passes in something like its reported form.