What selling actually costs, and what you'll walk away with

How each cost line actually works

Estate agency commission

If you sell through an agency, commission on the Costa Blanca typically runs 3-6% of the sale price, with 21% IVA added on top of that fee. Around Alicante specifically, 3-5% is the more commonly quoted range. There's no fixed legal rate here, it's negotiated, so it's worth asking more than one agency what they'd charge before you sign anything.

Plusvalía municipal (IIVTNU)

This is the tax on the increase in urban land value, and by law the seller pays it. Since a 2021 Constitutional Court ruling and the government's response, Real Decreto-ley 26/2021, you can work it out two ways and use whichever comes out lower: the objective method (the cadastral value of the land multiplied by a coefficient your town hall sets for how many years you owned the property) or the real method (the actual gain on the land's value between purchase and sale). If there was no increase in value, no tax is due at all, though you generally still have to file to prove it.

The coefficients and the tax rate are both set locally, so this genuinely varies by town. Alicante applies the maximum rate the law allows, 30%. Torrevieja sets its own, generally lower, coefficients. That's why this calculator asks you to enter the figure yourself rather than guessing at one, and links straight to SUMA and the Ayuntamiento de Alicante so you can get the real number.

The non-resident retention and capital gains tax

If you're not a Spanish tax resident, the buyer is legally required to withhold 3% of the agreed price and pay it to the Agencia Tributaria within a month, using Modelo 211, as a deposit against your eventual tax bill. You then have up to about four months from the sale to file Modelo 210, declaring your actual gain and paying 19% of it. If the 19% figure is lower than the 3% withheld, you're owed the difference back. If it's higher, you pay the rest.

That 19% rate is flat and doesn't change based on which country you're resident in. A UK seller and an EU or EEA seller pay the same 19%, even after Brexit. What can differ for non-EU/EEA residents is eligibility for certain exemptions, such as reinvesting proceeds into a new main home, so it's worth checking those separately.

If you are a Spanish tax resident, there's no withholding at all. Instead, the gain is taxed through the progressive savings-income brackets on your annual Renta declaration the following year: 19% up to €6,000, 21% up to €50,000, 23% up to €200,000, 27% up to €300,000, and 30% above that.

Mortgage cancellation costs

If there's still a mortgage on the property, the balance gets paid off out of the sale proceeds, and separately, someone needs to formally cancel the mortgage charge at the land registry. That involves a notary fee, a registry fee, and usually a gestoría to handle the paperwork. Altogether it typically runs somewhere between about €650 and €1,250, depending mostly on how large the original loan was.

Notary, registry, and gestoría

Common practice in Spain is for the buyer to cover almost all of the closing costs, including the notary's deed and the registry inscription, while the plusvalía municipal stays with the seller. That's the convention this calculator assumes, though the exact split can be agreed differently between the parties, so check what your own contract actually says. If you use a gestor to handle your own paperwork, that's a separate fee on top, and it's worth asking upfront what it covers.

Bought before 1994?

If you bought the property before 31 December 1994, a separate transitional rule, the coeficientes de abatimiento, may reduce the taxable gain on the first €400,000 of sale value across all the assets you've sold since 2015. It's a genuinely useful reduction for long-term owners, but it's specific enough that this calculator doesn't attempt to apply it. A gestor can run the real numbers for you.