Spain: rental market overview

Spanish residential leases sit under the Urban Leases Act (Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, LAU, Law 29/1994), reshaped twice in recent years — by Real Decreto-ley 7/2019 and by Ley 12/2023, the right-to-housing law. Título II, which covers dwelling leases, is imperative in the tenant's favour: a clause that departs from it to the tenant's detriment is void unless the law itself expressly allows the departure.

The headline feature is the mandatory minimum term (prórroga obligatoria, art. 9): a lease automatically extends, year by year, to five years where the landlord is a natural person, or seven where it's a company — unless the tenant opts out thirty days before an annual due date, or the landlord exercises a reserved own-use right.

• Own-use recovery (art. 9.3) is available only to natural-person landlords, only after the first year, with two months' notice, only for the landlord or a first-degree relative or spouse needing the dwelling as their permanent residence — and only if it was expressly reserved in the contract from the start.
• Once the five- or seven-year minimum is reached, the lease keeps renewing automatically by annual periods for up to three more years, unless the landlord gives four months' notice or the tenant two months' (tácita prórroga, art. 10).
• A tenant can leave early after six months with thirty days' notice (desistimiento, art. 11); an early-exit penalty of one month's rent per remaining year, prorated, only applies if the parties expressly agreed to one.

A brief, since-repealed episode is worth knowing about: Real Decreto-ley 8/2026 (20 March 2026) offered an extraordinary two-year extension for leases whose art. 9 minimum was due to end before 31 December 2027, but it was repealed by a Resolution of 28 April 2026 — the standard five/seven-year regime applies again without it.

The compulsory deposit (fianza obligatoria, art. 36.1) is exactly one month's rent for a dwelling — not a range, an exact figure — and the landlord must lodge it with the competent body of the autonomous community where the property sits: INCASÒL in Catalonia, the Agencia de Vivienda Social in the Community of Madrid, IBAVI in the Balearics, AVRA in Andalusia, and equivalents elsewhere. That's an administrative duty owed to the region, separate from — and not a substitute for — the fianza the tenant actually pays.

• Landlords can ask for extra guarantees on top — a bank guarantee, an additional deposit — but for contracts of up to five or seven years, the combined value of those extras is capped at two months' rent (art. 36.5, introduced by RDL 7/2019).
• The fianza itself earns no interest during the tenancy.
• If it isn't repaid within a month of the keys being returned, the outstanding balance starts accruing statutory legal interest (art. 36.4).

Because of the mandatory minimum term, Spanish "termination" mostly means the tenant deciding not to renew, rather than the landlord ending the lease. After the five- or seven-year floor, either side can stop the automatic tácita prórroga with notice — four months for the landlord, two for the tenant — and the tenant can already exit after six months on thirty days' notice. A landlord's only real exit route inside the minimum term is the reserved own-use ground of art. 9.3, described above.

• Rent is freely agreed under art. 17.1 — Spain has no general points-based or authority-set rent cap — except in a declared "zona de mercado residencial tensionado" (stressed-market zone) under Ley 12/2023, where a new contract's rent is capped by the last rent charged in the preceding five years, or by a reference-price-index ceiling for large holders (grandes tenedores), subject to narrow exceptions in art. 17.6 letters a)-d) that allow up to a 10% increase.
• For contracts from 26 May 2023 onward, any agreed rent-update clause may reference only the IRAV index (índice de referencia para la actualización anual de rentas de vivienda), published monthly by the INE — not the general CPI, and not any other index.
• Management and contract-formalisation costs always fall on the landlord under art. 20, regardless of whether they're an individual or a company — a rule Ley 12/2023 extended to individual landlords too.

The LAU imposes no statutory duty to draw up a written handover report, but it's standard Spanish market practice — and the parties' main evidence of the Vivienda's condition. The acta de entrega records the meter readings, the state of the property and an inventory of furniture and equipment, signed as the keys change hands.

It matters most on the way out: without one, there's little beyond each side's word to settle a dispute over damage or to justify withholding part of the fianza.

Nothing in Spanish law requires it, and no register keeps a copy — it lives entirely between landlord and tenant, which is exactly why Brokik keeps it attached to the lease record rather than treating it as a throwaway formality.

The landlord must carry out repairs necessary to keep the dwelling fit for use, at no extra charge, unless the damage is the tenant's own fault (art. 21.1). The tenant, in turn, covers the small repairs that ordinary wear from everyday use requires (art. 21.4).

• The tenant must report promptly anything the landlord must fix, but can carry out urgent repairs themselves to avoid imminent damage, notifying the landlord first (art. 21.3).
• Works changing the layout, access or installations always need the landlord's prior written consent (art. 23).
• A disabled or over-seventy tenant can carry out accessibility-adaptation works after written notice, so long as they don't touch common elements or reduce safety (art. 24).
• Some regions — Catalonia, the Balearics, the Canaries, Navarre, La Rioja, Asturias, Murcia and Extremadura — also require a valid cédula de habitabilidad before letting; most others, including Madrid, don't.