Holiday lets & investment on the Costa Blanca — licences, rules and realistic yields

Every second conversation with a UK buyer considering the Costa Blanca as an investment, not just a holiday home, comes down to the same two questions: can I actually let it out, and what will it really yield once every cost is accounted for? Both answers have moved substantially in the last eighteen months — new licensing law, a new power for communities of owners to say no, and a national registry that Spain’s own courts have just struck down. Here’s where things actually stand.

The Valencian tourist-rental licence (VT)

Short-term letting on the Costa Blanca — anything under 10 days for the same guest — falls under the Valencian Community’s Viviendas de Uso Turístico (VUT) regime: Ley 15/2018 and Decreto 10/2021, substantially tightened by Decreto-ley 9/2024 (in force since August 2024). Registration itself is a free declaración responsable filed with the regional tourism authority, generating a VT-000000-X registration number that must appear on every listing and piece of advertising. Since the 2024 reform, that registration lasts 5 years rather than indefinitely, with renewal required to keep operating.

The real hurdle isn’t the form — it’s the certificado de compatibilidad urbanística, a municipal certificate confirming your town’s own planning rules actually permit tourist use at your specific address. It’s issued by the ayuntamiento, not the region, and without it you cannot register at all.

Local moratoria on the Costa Blanca North: several towns have used their planning powers to pause new registrations in specific zones, rather than banning the activity outright:

• Dénia has suspended new tourist-rental licences in its historic old town centre (Les Marines, Les Rotes and Montgó are excluded from the suspension), most recently extended through September 2026.
• Jávea/Xàbia suspended new licences for apartments in September 2024; villas were re-authorised in September 2025, and in February 2026 the council proposed easing the apartment suspension further with zone-based caps.
• Calpe has a narrower, 2-year suspension on converting ground-floor commercial units into tourist housing, not a blanket moratorium.
• Teulada-Moraira has no moratorium — a proposal for one was rejected by the council in late 2025.

None of this affects a property already legally registered before its town’s suspension took effect — these are pauses on new registrations, not retroactive bans.

Communities of owners can now say no

This is the single biggest legal change for anyone buying an apartment specifically to holiday-let, and it’s recent enough that older content on this still gets it wrong. Ley Orgánica 1/2025, in force since 3 April 2025, rewrote Article 17.12 of Spain’s Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (LPH): a new tourist let in a community of owners now needs the community’s own prior authorisation, by a qualified majority of three-fifths of owners who also represent three-fifths of the participation quotas — a dual test, not a simple headcount. Communities can also impose a surcharge of up to 20% on community fees specifically for units used as tourist lets, if they permit them at all.

Two things matter for a buyer: it is not retroactive — a let already legally operating before 3 April 2025 continues under the old rules — and it applies specifically to properties held under horizontal-property regime (apartment blocks, and urbanisations with a constituted community of owners). A detached villa with no community of owners sits outside this rule entirely; a villa inside an urbanisation that does have a constituted community does not automatically escape it. If letting income is central to your plan, check the community’s stance — and its minutes for any recent vote on the subject — before you buy, not after.

The national registry that didn’t survive

In parallel, Spain tried to build a national short-term-rental registry (the Ventanilla Única Digital / Registro Único, under Real Decreto 1312/2024, implementing an EU data-sharing rule). It became mandatory from July 2025 — but the Generalitat Valenciana challenged the State’s competence to run a parallel national registration system on top of the regional one, and won: the Tribunal Supremo annulled the national registry provisions in May 2026 (judgment 19 May 2026, published in the BOE weeks later), on the basis that the State lacked constitutional competence to duplicate the regions’ own tourism registries. The digital data-sharing infrastructure itself survives, feeding platform data centrally, but the extra national registration number is void — as of today, a Costa Blanca owner needs only the regional VT registration described above. Spain’s government may legislate again on this; it’s worth checking before assuming the position is permanent.

What it realistically yields

Long-term letting: Alicante province was running at roughly 6.2% gross in early 2026, against a Spanish national average around 6.0–6.7%, per Idealista’s own transaction-and-rent data. Strip out community fees, IBI, insurance, maintenance and management, and net comes in meaningfully lower — realistically somewhere around 3.5–4.5% for a well-run let, though this is a synthesised estimate rather than a single published figure, so treat it as a planning range.

Holiday letting: gross yields of 6–8% are commonly quoted for well-located Costa Blanca stock, occasionally more for premium coastal properties in peak season — but no institutional dataset (Idealista, Tinsa or similar) publishes a Costa Blanca-specific short-term yield figure, so these are directional, not verified benchmarks. What’s better documented is how sharply gross compresses to net: one detailed case study puts total running costs — management, platform commissions, cleaning, utilities, pool/garden upkeep, maintenance, insurance and local taxes combined — at around two-thirds of gross booking income, turning a headline yield in the mid-teens into something closer to 2–4% net before tax. The honest comparison for most owners: holiday letting grosses more, but after full-service running costs and non-resident tax (below), net returns often land in similar territory to a long-term let, or lower.

	Long-term let	Holiday let
Typical gross yield	~6–7%	~6–8% (estimate)
After running costs	~3.5–4.5% net	~2–4% net (estimate, before tax)
Effort	Low — one tenant, annual dealings	High — turnover, cleaning, guest management
Licence required	No	Yes (VT registration)

Occupancy: the seasonality reality

There’s no official Costa Blanca-specific occupancy series for private holiday lets, but third-party booking-data estimates give a useful, honest spread: Dénia, Benissa and Altea cluster around 56–61% trailing annual occupancy, while Jávea’s median listing sits at just 36–37%, with only the top-performing, professionally managed properties reaching 55–65%-plus. That gap is the real story — a well-marketed, well-managed property in a strong location can comfortably outperform the median, but the median itself is a lot lower than marketing materials tend to suggest. Expect high season (June–September) to run close to full, shoulder months (April–May, October) around 50–70%, and winter to be genuinely quiet — plan your cash flow around the average, not the July fortnight.

Running costs — the recap

Community fees, IBI, non-resident imputed-income tax when not let, home insurance and (if mortgaged) valuation and arrangement costs all apply whether or not you let the property — see our costs and taxes guide for the full breakdown. Letting adds licence-related costs (above), civil liability insurance, and — critically — a different tax treatment on the income itself.

Tax on rental income: the 24% vs 19% gap

This is the single biggest practical difference between a UK owner and an EU/EEA owner letting the same property, and it hasn’t changed since Brexit. Under Spain’s non-resident income tax law (IRNR, Real Decreto Legislativo 5/2004), EU/EEA residents pay 19% on their net rental income — after deducting mortgage interest, repairs, community fees, insurance and other genuine costs. Non-EU/EEA residents, UK owners included, pay 24% on gross rental income, with no expense deductions permitted at all. On identical rental income, that’s a materially worse position for a UK owner than an equivalent French or German one — not a headline villain like the stalled 100% purchase-tax proposal covered in our costs guide, but a real, ongoing gap that affects every tax return.

Spain’s Audiencia Nacional ruled on 28 July 2025 that denying non-EU/EEA owners expense deductions breaches the EU’s free movement of capital (Article 63 TFEU), in a case brought by a US resident, not a UK one. Spain’s Abogacía del Estado has appealed to the Tribunal Supremo, and no final ruling exists as of writing — the judgment does not currently bind AEAT, which continues applying the 24%-on-gross rule to UK owners. Some advisers are recommending affected owners file protective rectifications of past returns to preserve the 4-year refund window in case the ruling is upheld — a genuinely useful next step to flag to an accountant, but not something to treat as settled law yet.

The long-term alternative

Letting on a standard tenancy under Spain’s Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos (LAU) avoids the tourist-licence question entirely — a private-landlord contract runs a minimum of 5 years by law (7 for corporate landlords), with tacit renewals, a statutory deposit of one month’s rent, and required notice periods of 2 months from the tenant or 4 from the landlord before the term ends. It’s simpler to manage and taxed more favourably for non-residents than a notional-income basis, but you’re locked into a genuine, protected tenancy — not a flexible, short-stay arrangement.

Spain’s 2023 Housing Law lets regions cap rent increases in declared “stressed market” zones, but the Comunidad Valenciana has not declared any such zone — and, as of July 2026, its regional government has explicitly and repeatedly declined to do so despite requests from 13 municipalities, preferring a voluntary tax-incentive scheme instead. That means no rent caps currently apply anywhere on the Costa Blanca — worth noting as a current political position rather than a permanent legal guarantee, since a future regional government could reverse it.

Who this suits — and who it doesn’t

A holiday let suits an owner who wants to offset costs on a property they’ll also use themselves, is comfortable with turnover, guest management and a licensing process, and is realistic that net returns — once tax, management and running costs are in — usually sit in low single digits rather than double digits. A long-term let suits an owner who wants simpler, steadier income and is prepared to accept a genuinely protected tenancy in exchange. Buying purely for headline yield, on either model, rarely survives contact with real running costs and, for a UK owner specifically, the 24% non-resident tax rate.

Related reading

• Every tax and fee of owning Costa Blanca property — see The Costs & Taxes of Buying on the Costa Blanca
• The full purchase process for UK buyers — see the companion buying-in-Spain guide (pillar in production)

Not tax or legal advice

This article is for general information only and does not constitute tax, legal or investment advice. Tourist-rental law is set at regional and municipal level in Spain and continues to change quickly — the Valencian regime, community-veto rules and national registry have all changed materially within the last two years, and the non-resident tax treatment covered here is currently subject to unresolved litigation. Always confirm current requirements with a qualified Spanish lawyer or tax adviser, and check your specific town’s planning rules, before committing to a purchase intended for rental income. Facts in this piece current as of 7 July 2026.

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