Real estate
Selling your home in Spain as a non-resident: the 3% retention
When you sell a home in Spain as a non-resident, the buyer keeps 3 % and the town hall charges the plusvalía. Here are the deadlines, forms and taxes.
June 30, 2026 · Riondato & Partners
Selling a property in Spain when you don't live there for tax purposes comes with two surprises few people mention before the signing. First: the buyer doesn't hand you the whole price, they keep 3 % and pay it to the Spanish tax office. Second: the town hall asks you for the plusvalía municipal, a tax on the land that you settle separately. Here is how each step works, the deadlines you face, and how to pay only what you owe.
You count as "non-resident" even if you own a home there
For Spanish tax you are non-resident if you spend fewer than 183 days a year in Spain and your centre of interests is elsewhere. Owning a place on the coast doesn't make you a resident. If you live in Italy and sell your flat in Alicante or Málaga, Spain treats you as non-resident and applies the Impuesto sobre la Renta de no Residentes (IRNR), the non-resident income tax.
The 3 % retention: why the buyer keeps that money
When the seller is non-resident, the law requires the buyer to withhold 3 % of the sale price and pay it to the Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax office. It isn't a fee or a buyer's whim: it's an advance payment on your capital gains tax. The buyer declares it with modelo 211 and has one month from the date of the deed to pay it in.
That 3 % works as a guarantee for the tax office. Since you live abroad, Spain collects something before the money leaves the country. Then it's your turn.
Modelo 210: where you reclaim or top up
With modelo 210 you work out the real gain on the sale and the tax you actually owe. The gain is the difference between what you paid when you bought and what you received when you sold, minus costs. The rate for non-residents is 19 %, the same whether you live inside the European Union or outside it.
Three things can happen here:
- If 19 % of your gain is less than the 3 % withheld, the tax office refunds the difference.
- If it's more, you pay the rest.
- If you sold at a loss, you get the whole 3 % back.
You have four months from the sale to file it: the month the buyer has to pay the retention, plus three months for you. If a refund is due, don't let it slide.
Plusvalía municipal: the town hall's tax
The plusvalía municipal (its technical name is Impuesto sobre el Incremento de Valor de los Terrenos de Naturaleza Urbana, IIVTNU) taxes the rise in the value of urban land from the day you bought to the day you sell. The seller pays it, and you settle it at the town hall where the property sits, not with the national tax office.
Since the reform of November 2021 you can pick whichever method suits you:
- Objective method: starts from the cadastral value of the land (valor catastral) and applies coefficients based on how many years you held it.
- Real method: takes the difference between the land value when you bought and when you sold.
You choose the cheaper one. And there's a clear case: if you sell for the same price you paid or less, there's no increase, so you owe no plusvalía municipal. The deadline is 30 working days from the signing.
What you can deduct to pay less
The taxable gain isn't the full price. Before the 19 % applies you can subtract a fair amount:
- What you paid to buy the home, including the ITP (transfer tax) or the VAT on that purchase.
- Notary, land registry and gestoría (paperwork agency) fees, both then and now.
- Estate agent and lawyer fees.
- The plusvalía municipal you just paid.
- Improvement works (not ordinary maintenance), if you kept the invoices.
Keeping the invoices from when you bought, sometimes twenty years back, is what separates an inflated gain from a reasonable one. Without papers, the tax office works from the bare purchase price.
And in Italy, do I pay twice?
If you live in Italy, the Italian tax authority taxes your worldwide income, and that includes selling a house in Spain. There's an important catch though: in Italy the gain on selling a property is taxed only if you sell within five years of buying (and if it wasn't your main home). After five years, you owe nothing in Italy on that sale.
If the sale is taxable in Italy too, the double taxation treaty between Italy and Spain comes in. The gain is taxable in the country where the property sits (Spain) and also in your country of residence (Italy), but Italy lets you offset what you already paid in Spain through a tax credit. So you don't pay the full tax twice.
If you have any doubts, Riondato & Partners is here to help
Selling across two countries means lining up deadlines, tax forms and two tax authorities at once, and one slip on dates can cost you the 3 % refund. At Riondato & Partners we have spent over 45 years guiding families and companies between Italy and Spain, and we know both sides of the process. If you're thinking of selling your home in Spain, write to us and we'll look at it together.