Buying a home with a tenant in it: the lease comes with the house.

Plenty of resale homes on the Costa del Sol come with someone living in them. Sometimes it's a tenant on a proper long-term lease, sometimes a family who've been there for years. The asking price can look good, and that's usually why. In Spain, when you buy a let home, the lease comes with it.

This page is about what that means if you want the place for yourself, even for part of the year.

The lease comes with the house

Under Spain's tenancy law, the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos (article 14), the buyer of a rented home steps into the seller's shoes as landlord. On a lease of someone's main home, the tenant keeps their contract and can stay until it has run five years from the start, or seven if the seller was a company. That holds even if the lease says a sale ends it, and even though you bought in good faith and registered the deed.

So if a tenant signed two years ago with a private landlord, you could be looking at three more years before you get the keys back.

What changes on 15 November 2026

A new decree, Real Decreto-ley 28/2026, published on 7 October, changes what happens when a main-home lease reaches the end of those five or seven years. From 15 November:

• Longer renewals. The lease renews on its own for further five-year blocks (seven with a company landlord), unless the landlord gives six months' notice. Until now it was yearly, up to three more years, with four months' notice.
• Compensation for the tenant. A landlord who doesn't renew owes the tenant twelve months' rent at the official reference value for the home, or one month's rent for every year they've been there, whichever is more. It's paid when the keys come back.
• It moves with the house. The decree says a sale doesn't take away the tenant's right to be paid. If you buy the home, you're the one who pays.

There are exceptions. Nothing is owed if the landlord, as a private person, needs the home as a permanent residence for themselves or close family and moves in within three months, or if the tenant hasn't lived there for six of the last twelve months, has another suitable home in the same town, or turns down a fair new lease. A winter base usually isn't a permanent residence, so for most of our buyers the first exception won't help. Your lawyer can tell you where you stand.

One thing to watch. A decree like this has to be voted through by Congress within 30 days, and with the Cortes dissolved for the election, that vote falls to its standing committee. An earlier version, Real Decreto-ley 27/2026, was voted down on 29 September. We'll update this page when the vote happens. The five or seven years under article 14 stand either way.

When tenants do leave

None of this means a tenant can never be moved. People leave all the time, and it helps to know which situations are which.

• Not every let is a main-home lease. Holiday lets and seasonal lets don't carry the five years. Ask to see the contract and how the home is actually used.
• The lease may already be past its minimum. Then the landlord can end it with notice. From 15 November, if the decree stands, that's six months and compensation.
• Own use, if the contract says so. A private landlord can take the home back after the first year to live in it, or for close family, if the lease said so when it was signed. That's for living in, not for selling.
• By agreement. Most tenants who leave before a sale do it because they've agreed to, sometimes for a payment. That works, but it's a deal, not a right, so don't count on it until the tenant has signed.

The hard cases are different again. A tenant who stops paying, or someone living there with no lease at all, can take a court case and months to remove, and courts can pause an eviction where a vulnerable household has nowhere to go. Buying empty is how you stay out of all of it.

The tenant may get first refusal

A tenant has a right to buy the home before anyone else, at the same price. The seller has to tell them about the sale formally, by burofax or through a notary, and the tenant then has 30 days to decide. If the seller skips this, the tenant can step in after the sale and take your place on the same terms, within 30 days of finding out. Whether a tenant could give the right up in their lease depends on the lease, so that's one for your lawyer to read.

When a seller says the home isn't let, they have to declare it in the deed at the notary, and it's a criminal offence to lie about it. Your lawyer checks that declaration, or the paperwork showing the tenant was offered the sale and said no, before you sign anything.

What we'd do

If you want the home for your own use, buy it empty. Get vacant possession (libre de arrendatarios y ocupantes) written into the reservation contract and the purchase contract, and have your lawyer confirm at the notary that nobody's living there. Don't pay a deposit on a let home on the promise that the tenant will be gone by completion, unless they've already signed their agreement to leave and your money is protected if they don't.

If you're buying to let long-term, a sitting tenant can suit you, as long as the rent, the lease dates and the payment record all check out. Ask for the lease, the last twelve months of payments and the tenant's deposit. Since January 2026 a landlord in Andalusia keeps that deposit rather than lodging it with the Junta, so make sure it's handed over at completion.

When a home you like is let, ask the agent for a copy of the lease, the date it started and whether the landlord is a person or a company. Ask whether the tenant has been offered the sale, and whether they've agreed to leave and when. Your lawyer takes it from there. If you don't have one yet, here's why it should be your own and what a good one checks.