# Selling Spanish Property as a Non-Resident in 2026: The 3% Retention Explained

> Your buyer keeps 3% of the price and pays it to the tax office within a month. It is not a tax, it is a deposit against the 19% you owe on the gain, and if you sell at a loss you get all of it back. Most of the trouble comes from not filing to ask.

Published: 2026-09-23
Author: Erick Kit
Canonical: https://wesnagroup.com/blog/selling-spanish-property-non-resident-2026-3-percent-retention
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Cite as: Wesna Group, "Selling Spanish Property as a Non-Resident in 2026: The 3% Retention Explained", wesnagroup.com

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Sell a Spanish property as a non-resident and you do not receive the full price. The buyer is required to keep 3% of it and pay that to the Agencia Tributaria within one month. On a EUR 300,000 sale that is EUR 9,000 you will not see at the notary, and getting it back depends entirely on what you do in the three months after.

## What the 3% actually is

It is not a tax. It is a payment on account of the tax you owe on the gain, held by the state because you live abroad and are harder to chase.

The obligation sits on the buyer, not on you, and it applies whether the buyer is Spanish or foreign. They withhold 3% of the agreed consideration, file [Modelo 211](https://sede.agenciatributaria.gob.es/Sede/ayuda/manuales-videos-folletos/manuales-practicos/manual-tributacion-no-residentes/capitulo-03-tributacion-rentas-comunes-nr/ganancias-patrimoniales/ganancias-patrimoniales-derivadas-venta-inmuebles.html) and pay it over within one month of the date on the deed. You get a stamped copy. Keep it, because it is the receipt you will need.

The percentage is on the price, not on the profit. That is the detail that surprises people. A property bought for EUR 320,000 and sold for EUR 300,000 is a loss, and the buyer still withholds EUR 9,000, because nobody at the notary is in a position to verify your gain.

## The rate on the gain is 19%, for everyone

This is where most of the advice online is wrong, so it is worth being precise.

The capital gain on a Spanish property sold by a non-resident is taxed at 19%, and that rate does not change with your nationality or your country of residence. British, American, Ukrainian, Russian, Norwegian, Dutch: all 19%.

The 19 and 24 per cent split that you will read about is real, but it applies to rental income and to imputed income on a property you leave empty, not to the gain on a sale. Our explainer on [Modelo 210](/blog/modelo-210-non-resident-tax-spanish-property-2026) covers that side. Confusing the two is how a seller from outside the EU talks themselves into expecting a bill a quarter larger than the one that arrives.

| | Who pays | Form | Rate | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retention on the price | Buyer | Modelo 211 | 3% of the sale price | One month from the deed |
| Tax on the gain | Seller | Modelo 210, section H | 19% of the gain | Three months after the buyer's month |
| Plusvalia municipal | Seller | Town hall form | Set by the ayuntamiento | Thirty days, in most towns |

## Working out the gain, and the costs that reduce it

The gain is the sale price minus the acquisition cost, and the acquisition cost is larger than what you paid.

You add to the purchase price the transfer tax or VAT you paid on the way in, the notary and land registry fees, and the lawyer's fee. You may also add the cost of improvements, which means structural work and extensions, not repainting and not a new sofa. Keep the facturas: an invoice with your name, your NIE and the contractor's tax number counts, a bank transfer on its own does not.

From the sale price you deduct the estate agency commission and the plusvalia municipal if you paid it, along with your legal costs on the way out.

The arithmetic matters more than it looks. On a property bought at EUR 250,000 and sold at EUR 300,000, the raw gain reads EUR 50,000 and the tax EUR 9,500, which happens to land near the retention. Add EUR 25,000 of purchase costs and improvements and deduct EUR 9,000 of selling costs, and the real gain is EUR 16,000 and the tax EUR 3,040. That is a EUR 5,960 refund you only receive if you file for it.

The figures on the way in are the same ones set out in our breakdown of the [total cost of buying property in Spain](/blog/total-cost-of-buying-property-spain), which is the document to dig out before you start.

## Getting the money back

The refund is not automatic. Nobody at the tax office computes your gain and sends a cheque.

You file Modelo 210 under section H, within three months of the end of the buyer's one month window, so four months from the sale. You attach the stamped Modelo 211 and the paperwork proving both ends of the calculation. If the tax on the real gain is less than the 3% withheld, you claim the difference.

Refunds are paid by bank transfer, and the account details go on the form. Keeping your Spanish account open until the money lands is the simplest way to avoid the file stalling over where to send it, so do not close it the week you sell.

The tax office has six months to pay before interest starts running. In practice the timetable is measured in months rather than weeks, and it slips if anything in the file is missing.

### If you sold at a loss

You still file, and you claim the whole EUR 9,000 back. A loss does not exempt you from the declaration; it is the declaration that turns the retention from a cost into a deposit.

### If you are EU or EEA resident

There is one extra route. A non-resident of the EU, Iceland or Norway who sells what was their main home in Spain and reinvests the proceeds in another main home can be exempt from the gain. The retention is still taken at the notary and you still have to file to recover it.

## Where sales go wrong

Four failures account for most of the trouble, and none of them are about the tax itself.

### The buyer does not file

The obligation is theirs, but the property is the security. If the buyer withholds your 3% and never pays it over, the tax office pursues the property, and you are the one with a problem to unpick. Ask for the stamped Modelo 211 and do not treat the sale as finished until you have seen it. A conveyancer handles this as standard, which is one of the reasons to have one; our note on [Spanish lawyer fees](/blog/spanish-lawyer-fees-2026-property-purchase-cost) covers what that costs.

### Nobody kept the invoices

Twenty years of improvements with no facturas is twenty years of deductions you cannot claim. If you are thinking of selling in the next few years, collect them now, while the builder is still trading.

### The four months pass

Miss the window and you are into surcharges and interest, and the refund gets harder rather than impossible. Put the date in a calendar at the notary, not afterwards.

### Selling from abroad without a power of attorney

If you will not be in Spain on the day, you need a power of attorney in place well before completion, and it takes longer than people expect when it has to be notarised and apostilled abroad. Our guide to [buying and selling remotely](/blog/buying-spanish-property-remotely-power-of-attorney-2026) sets out the sequence.

## FAQ

### Is the 3% retention refundable?

Yes, in whole or in part, but only if you file Modelo 210 section H and claim it. It is a payment on account of the 19% due on your gain. If the real tax is lower, the difference comes back; if you sold at a loss, all of it does.

### Do non-EU sellers pay 24% instead of 19%?

No. The gain on a property sale is taxed at 19% for every non-resident regardless of country. The 24% figure applies to rental and imputed income, not to a sale, and mixing the two is the most common mistake in English-language advice on this.

### How long does the refund take?

The tax office has six months from the filing deadline before it owes you interest. Expect months rather than weeks, and expect it to take longer if the file is short of an invoice or the account details are wrong.

### Who pays the plusvalia municipal?

The seller, by default, and it is a separate tax from the 19% on the gain. It is set by the town hall on the increase in the land value, and since the 2021 reform you can choose the calculation method that produces the lower figure. If the land has not gained value, it is not due.

### Can I avoid the retention by selling to a Spanish buyer?

No. The obligation follows the seller's residency, not the buyer's. Any buyer, Spanish or foreign, purchasing from a non-resident must withhold the 3%.

### What if I am selling one of two properties?

The retention applies per transaction, on the price of the property being sold. The reinvestment exemption, where it applies at all, is only for a main home, so a second property being sold is a straightforward gain calculation.

## Next steps

Send us the purchase deed and the year you bought, and we will work out what the gain looks like on today's market and what the retention would leave you waiting for. Start at [contacts](/contacts). Or see what comparable properties are asking in the [full catalogue](/catalog?deal=sale).