Spain Land Registry Check: What to Verify Before You Buy

Spain keeps two parallel records of every property, and they do not always agree. The Registro de la Propiedad is a register of rights. Registrars run it under the Ministerio de Justicia, and the governing text is the Ley Hipotecaria, the Decreto of 8 February 1946, still in force in consolidated form on boe.es. Every property has its own folio, called a finca registral, identified by a 14-digit code, the CRU, known before 2015 as the IDUFIR. On that folio the registrar records who holds title, the deed that gave it to them, a written description of the property, and every charge attached to it: mortgages, court and tax embargoes, easements, resolutory conditions, registered leases and fiscal affection notes.

The Catastro is a register of things. It sits under the Ministerio de Hacienda, describes the physical property, its built surface, its plot, its use and its year of construction, and produces the valor catastral that drives your IBI bill. Anyone can view the descriptive and graphical record free of charge at the Sede Electrónica del Catastro.

The distinction decides what you can do on signing day. The registry tells you who is legally able to sell and what is owed, while the Catastro tells you what the tax administration believes exists on the plot. Ley 13/2015 pushed the two together by giving the registry a graphical base, and a property described as "coordinada gráficamente con el Catastro" carries a legal presumption that its boundaries are accurate. Many older properties on the Costa Blanca are still uncoordinated, and on those the registry description is often a paragraph typed in the 1970s that mentions a neighbour who died decades ago.

One point catches out buyers from the UK and northern Europe: registration in Spain is voluntary. A sale is valid between the two parties without it, and what registration buys is protection against everybody else. Article 34 of the Ley Hipotecaria shields a buyer who purchased in good faith, for value, from the person the registry showed as owner, and who then registered the purchase. Skip registration and you keep the house but lose that shield. Mortgages work the other way round, because a mortgage does not legally exist until the registry records it.

For the longer comparison between the deed itself and the registry extract, see escritura vs nota simple.

How to pull a nota simple, and what it costs

1. Identify the property. The cleanest identifier is the 14-digit CRU. Failing that, the 20-character referencia catastral works, and it appears on any IBI receipt and on the Catastro website. Address alone is the weakest option, because urbanisations on the Orihuela Costa and around Ciudad Quesada carry dozens of near-identical street names.
2. Order it online. Go to registradores.org, open the citizen services area, create an account and pay by card. The portal asks you to state your interest in the property. A buyer under negotiation qualifies under Article 221 of the Ley Hipotecaria, and the owner is never told that you asked.
3. Choose the right product. The nota simple informativa gives you titular, descripción and cargas. The version with información gráfica adds the registry boundary plotted against the Catastro map, and it is worth the extra few euros on any plot, villa or rural finca.
4. Read it the same day. Most requests come back within two or three hours during registry opening hours. A handful go to a registrar for manual extraction and take a working day or two.
5. Refresh it before you sign. A nota simple is a snapshot. An embargo lodged the week after you ordered yours will not appear on the copy sitting in your inbox.

At the escritura, the notary requests a fresh telematic nota simple from the registry, and the registrar must warn the notary about any document lodged against the property in the days that follow. Once the notary sends the signed deed electronically to the registry, that filing creates an asiento de presentación reserving your priority for 60 working days, and the registrar then has 15 working days to qualify and register the deed. Those two electronic steps carry most of the protection in a Spanish purchase, which is why it matters who your notary is and what they check. We set out the division of labour in what a Spanish notary does and does not do.

Document	Where you get it	Typical cost	Turnaround
Nota simple informativa	registradores.org, online	EUR 9.02 plus VAT, about EUR 10.91	Same day to 24 hours
Nota simple con información gráfica	registradores.org, online	In the region of EUR 15 with VAT	Same day to 24 hours
Certificación registral (certified version)	The registry holding the finca	In the region of EUR 30 with VAT	2 to 5 working days
Consulta descriptiva y gráfica catastral	sedecatastro.gob.es	Free	Instant
Certificado de deudas de comunidad	Administrador de fincas	EUR 0 to 60	3 to 10 working days
Informe de Evaluación del Edificio or ITE	Architect or technical architect	EUR 300 to 700 for a small block	2 to 4 weeks
Full legal due diligence file	Spanish lawyer	EUR 1,200 to 2,000, or roughly 1% of price	1 to 3 weeks

Those figures sit alongside the transfer tax, notary and registry costs covered in our total cost of buying in Spain guide.

The eight checks that decide whether you sign the arras

Your money stops being refundable at the arras contract. Under a standard contrato de arras penitenciales, walking away costs you the deposit, and 10% on a EUR 400,000 property is EUR 40,000. Run every one of these checks before you transfer that money, not in the weeks between arras and completion. The mechanics of the contract itself sit in what you actually sign in a contrato de arras.

1. The person selling is the person on the registry. Match names and NIE or DNI numbers exactly. If the owners are married under gananciales, both must sign. If the registered owner has died and the heirs have not registered the inheritance, nothing can complete until they do, and that runs from six weeks to a year. If a company owns it, ask for the escritura de nombramiento of the administrator.
2. Outstanding mortgage. The cargas section shows the registered responsabilidad hipotecaria, which is higher than the debt actually outstanding, because it includes future interest and costs. Ask the seller's bank for a certificado de deuda pendiente dated close to completion. At the notary, a bank cheque clears the loan and the registry cancels the charge afterwards. That cancellation costs roughly EUR 400 to 900 in notary and registry fees, and it belongs to the seller.
3. Embargoes. These come from Agencia Tributaria, Seguridad Social, the ayuntamiento, the community of owners or a private creditor. An embargo travels with the property, not with the person. Never accept a verbal promise to clear one without seeing the figure and the payment route.
4. Servidumbres. Rights of way, water channels, overhead power lines and drainage rights all sit in this section. They matter most on inland plots, including the hillside parcels around Polop and Hondón de las Nieves. Check the reverse too: a plot that needs a neighbour's track for access should have that access registered in its favour.
5. Horizontal division. Any apartment, and most houses inside a gated urbanisation, belong to a propiedad horizontal. The nota simple gives your coeficiente de participación, the percentage that sets your share of every future derrama. A penthouse with a 3.4% coefficient pays 3.4% of a new lift.
6. Built surface. Compare three numbers: the registry description, the Catastro record and a tape measure. When a listing quotes 169 m2, as ours does for WES-2080, a 4-bed house in La Nucía at EUR 465,000, your job before arras is to confirm the registry and the Catastro carry a matching figure.
7. Community debt certificate. Article 9.1.e of the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (Ley 49/1960) makes a buyer liable for community arrears covering the current year plus the three preceding calendar years. The seller must produce a certificate from the administrador. Spanish law lets you waive that certificate at the notary, and waiving it means you inherit whatever the seller left unpaid.
8. Urbanistic status at the ayuntamiento. Ask for the licence of first occupancy, the second occupancy paperwork, and confirmation that no expediente de disciplina urbanística is open. On coastal plots, check the Ley de Costas servidumbre de protección line, which runs 100 metres inland from the shore on most stretches and 20 metres in built-up areas classified before 1988.

Buyers who cannot attend in person should read buying remotely with a power of attorney, and anyone working through the sequence for the first time will find it laid out in our 12-step checklist for non-resident buyers.

The traps that actually catch buyers on this coast

The extension nobody declared. Owners on this coast enclose terraces into kitchens, convert garages into bedrooms, roof over solariums and dig pools without declaring any of it. The registry still shows the original build, the Catastro sometimes shows the extension because an aerial survey caught it, and a mortgage valuation counts only the registered metres. If the local planning authority can no longer act, because the disciplinary window has expired, an architect's certificate of the age of the works allows the extension to be regularised as an obra nueva antigua under Article 28.4 of the Ley del Suelo. Expect EUR 1,500 to EUR 3,000 for the technician, notary and registry between them. If the window has not expired, the ayuntamiento can still order the work undone, and that liability travels with the property. Settle who pays before arras.

The gap between your nota simple and the signature. Most buyers order one, read it, and never look again. Between arras and escritura a creditor can register an embargo, and it takes priority by date of entry. Your lawyer should re-request the nota simple in the 48 hours before completion, and the notary's telematic check on signing day is the backstop.

A non-resident seller. When the seller is not tax resident in Spain, the buyer must withhold 3% of the price and pay it to Agencia Tributaria on Modelo 211 within a month of the deed. Miss it and the debt attaches to the property you just bought. In the same situation the buyer also becomes the substitute taxpayer for plusvalía municipal, the IIVTNU, so agree in the arras contract who funds it and hold the money back at completion.

Unpaid IBI. The property itself answers for unpaid IBI over the non-prescribed years, whoever ran up the bill. Ask for four years of receipts. In the year of sale, Spanish case law since the Supreme Court ruling of June 2016 lets the seller claim a prorated share from the buyer unless the contract says otherwise, so write the split into the arras.

Occupancy. The registry says nothing about who is living there. A tenant, a family member with a verbal arrangement or an occupier can all sit outside the folio entirely. Visit the property, and put vacant possession at completion into the contract with a penalty attached.

Building inspection duties are regional, and our stock straddles three autonomous communities:

Where the property sits	Building inspection regime	Second occupancy paperwork	Who confirms it
Comunitat Valenciana (Torrevieja, Guardamar, Orihuela Costa, Pilar de la Horadada, Benidorm, Dénia, València)	IEEV.CV, generally residential blocks from 50 years old	Declaración responsable de segunda ocupación	Ayuntamiento, register held by the Generalitat
Región de Murcia (Los Alcázares, San Pedro del Pinatar, Torre Pacheco, Cartagena, Murcia)	ITE set by municipal ordinance, commonly from 50 years	Licence or certificate of second occupancy, varies by municipality	Ayuntamiento
Andalucía (Vera, Pulpí, San Juan de los Terreros)	ITE under Andalusian regulation, generally from 50 years	Licencia de ocupación or its municipal equivalent	Ayuntamiento

Confirm the exact trigger with the town hall that governs the property, because two neighbouring municipalities can apply different thresholds to identical buildings.

FAQ

Is a nota simple legally binding?

No. A nota simple is an informative extract with no public faith attached. The certified version, the certificación registral, is the document that carries evidentiary weight and can be produced in court. For a normal purchase the nota simple is enough, because the notary requests a fresh telematic one on the day you sign.

Can I request a nota simple on a property I do not own?

Yes. The Spanish registry is public for anyone with a legitimate interest in the state of a property, under Article 221 of the Ley Hipotecaria, and a buyer in negotiation qualifies. You do not need the seller's permission, you do not need a Spanish NIE to order one, and the owner is not notified.

The registry says 90 m2 and the Catastro says 118 m2. Which one is right?

Neither, automatically. The gap usually means somebody enclosed a terrace or added a floor without declaring it to the registry, or the Catastro included a covered porch that its aerial survey picked up. Measure the property, then have a technician tell you which figure matches the licensed build.

Does a nota simple show tenants or squatters?

Only if the lease was registered, which is rare in Spain. Occupation is a factual question rather than a registry question. Visit the property, ask the ayuntamiento what the empadronamiento record for the address shows, and write vacant possession at completion into the arras with a penalty attached.

How recent does the nota simple need to be when I sign?

Order one when you start negotiating and treat anything over 30 days old as stale. Your lawyer should pull a fresh copy in the 48 hours before completion, and the notary requests another telematically on the day of the escritura. That last one is the check that catches a late embargo.

Next steps

Send us the address or the referencia catastral of any property you are weighing up. We will pull the nota simple and read the charges back to you before you commit to arras. Start on our contact page.