Why the letting rules keep tightening on the Costa del Sol.

We help people buy to live here and we help people buy to let, and neither is anything to apologise for. But if you're putting money into a flat you plan to rent out, you're buying into a coast with a real housing problem, and you'll hear about it sooner or later from a neighbour or a taxi driver. It's worth understanding before you buy, because the mood in the towns is where the rules come from, and the rules decide what your flat can earn.

What's going on in the towns

Renting on this coast has become very hard for the people who work here. Idealista puts rent in Málaga province at 58% of family income in the second quarter of 2026, the highest of any province in Spain, against 39% nationally. This spring, staff at the Hospital Costa del Sol in Marbella were reported to be sleeping in their cars because they couldn't find anything they could afford near work, and the CSIF union called it structural.

People have taken it to the streets. The Málaga para vivir march on 27 June was the group's fourth. The organisers said 25,000 people came and the police said about 4,500, and the slogans were about tourist flats, investment funds and wages that haven't kept up.

Foreign buyers are part of the picture. Foreigners bought 37% of the homes sold in Málaga province between April and June, more than twice the national rate of 16%. But they're not the whole of it. The Banco de España puts Spain's housing shortfall at about 700,000 homes, half of it in five markets including Málaga, and lists the causes as population growth, smaller households, too little building land, too few builders, short-term lets, demand from non-residents, uncertain regulation and too little investment. It's rarely one thing, and if you're Irish you'll recognise a good deal of this from home.

How the mood is turning into rules

The anger has landed hardest on holiday letting, and the rules are tightening at three levels: the town, the building and the register.

The town. Since March 2025, Andalusian councils can pause new tourist lets for up to three years. Málaga city did exactly that from 23 August 2025, across the whole municipality, after the number of neighbourhoods where tourist flats passed 8% of homes went from 43 to 53 in a year. In July 2026 it went further and stopped new hotels, hostels and tourist apartments going onto residential land, again for up to three years. Fuengirola has refused new registrations without an independent entrance since February 2024. A report commissioned by Benalmádena council counted 8,209 tourist dwellings, 17% of homes, and recommended halting new ones in the busiest areas, and Manilva is drawing up an ordinance that would bar new tourist lets in its most saturated zone. Marbella and Estepona still take new registrations as far as we can find, though Marbella is setting up its own register and limiting shops turned into tourist flats.

The building. Since 3 April 2025, a flat in a community building can't start holiday letting without the approval of three-fifths of the owners, who must also hold three-fifths of the shares, and some buildings ban it in their statutes outright. This is the one that catches investors, because it's the neighbours who decide, and you can buy a flat and then lose the vote.

The register. Registering with the Junta is still done by declaration, but the checks behind it are far stricter than they were. In April 2026 not one new tourist let was registered in any of Andalucía's eight provincial capitals. The national registration number brought in in July 2025 was annulled by the Supreme Court in May 2026, so the Andalusian register is the one that counts again.

We go through the licence, the vote and the registration step by step in holiday lets in Andalusia and the rental rules have changed.

What happened to the September decrees

On 29 September 2026 the Cabinet approved two housing decrees. The first, Real Decreto-ley 26/2026, was published in the BOE on 30 September and was in force from 1 October. The second, Real Decreto-ley 27/2026, was published on 1 October and was in force from 2 October. On 2 October 2026 Congress rejected both. The vote on the first was 172 for and 178 against, with PP, Vox, Junts and UPN voting against, and the second was rejected too. A rejected decree is repealed and doesn't go forward as a bill. Congress's decision was published in the BOE on 2 October 2026, so neither is in force.

For the record, here's what had been proposed. The first decree set out 10% VAT from 1 December 2026 on furnished lets of 30 nights or less, or with hotel-type services, new limits on seasonal and room lets, a 2% limit on yearly rent updates to the end of 2027 unless landlord and tenant agreed otherwise, with no rise at all where the rent was above the reference index, a right for tenants whose contract ended before the end of 2028 to ask for up to two more years, a year at a time, and a rule stopping property-buying companies buying homes for less than 70% of their valuation. The second would have renewed leases of a main home automatically for further five or seven-year periods unless either side gave notice, and a landlord who ended one would have owed compensation. As of October 2026, none of this is law. Seasonal lets stay under the existing tenancy law (the LAU), and yearly rent updates on long lets signed since May 2023 still follow the existing reference index.

What comes next isn't law either. The Prime Minister has said the government won't step back on housing, and Junts has floated a new text with changes. Some of these measures could come back in a different form, so treat them as possible, not settled.

What's talked about but isn't law

The headline you've probably seen is the 100% tax on property bought by non-EU buyers. The government announced it in January 2025 and a bill was registered in Congress in May 2025, but as of October 2026 it hasn't been passed and isn't law. It's aimed at buyers who live outside the EU, so it wouldn't affect Irish buyers living in Ireland or elsewhere in the EU.

National law lets a region declare “stressed” areas where rents on new lets are capped. As of October 2026 no town in Andalucía has been declared one, so there are no caps on new lets here. The regional government has chosen not to declare any, and a future one could decide differently.

The measures in the two September decrees are in the same place now: approved by the Cabinet, rejected by Congress on 2 October 2026, and repealed in the BOE the same day.

Holiday let or long let

Which you choose is your call. What we can tell you is that the two carry very different kinds of risk.

A holiday let can earn more in a good year, but everything above applies to it, the town, the building and the register, and as of October 2026 all three are tightening. Once management, cleaning, community fees and tax come off, a properly run holiday let here usually ends up with a net yield in the low single digits on the purchase price. We set out the numbers in what a two-bed really earns.

A long let earns less and asks less of you, and none of the tourist rules apply. As of October 2026, the tenant has the right to stay at least five years if you own personally, or seven if a company owns it, and the agency's fee is yours to pay, not the tenant's. For contracts signed since May 2023, the yearly rise can't be more than the official reference index. It's also the kind of letting the towns are short of. Bear in mind that the measures Congress has just rejected were aimed at long lets, so it's the kind of letting most affected if any of them come back. Renting long term on the Costa del Sol covers it from the tenant's side, which is worth reading as a landlord.

If you're still deciding whether to let at all, buy-to-let or lock-up-and-leave is the place to start.

Tax, in one paragraph

If you live in Ireland and let in Spain, you pay Spanish non-resident tax at 19% on the rent after expenses. Buyers from outside the EU pay 24% on the gross, and the law doesn't let them deduct expenses, though that question is now in front of the Supreme Court. For any time the flat isn't let, including the weeks you use it yourself, Spain taxes a notional income of 1.1% or 2% of the cadastral value, at the same 19%. Then there's the Irish side, which is one for your own adviser, and the yearly costs are all in the annual cost of owning.

What we check before you buy to let

Before you sign for a flat you mean to let, we want to see its registration if it has one, the community's statutes, the minutes of recent meetings and any vote on tourist use, and whether the council has paused or limited lets on that street. A flat that's already registered, in a building that has approved tourist use, is a very different buy from one where you'd be asking the neighbours for permission. Your lawyer confirms all of it in writing, and here's what a good lawyer checks.

Where we stand

Foreign money is part of why this coast is expensive, and it's also a big part of why there's work here. We won't pretend either half away. What we'll do is make sure you know what the town is going through and what the rules are before you commit, because the people who get caught out are the ones nobody told.

Talk it through with us