A guide for overseas owners: how to run your Spanish rental from another country
Plenty of people living in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Portugal or Italy own a home in Spain and let it out. Spanish law applies to you exactly as it does to any other landlord, but you are running things from a distance, in another language, and with your own non-resident tax to deal with. Inquly brings everything you need into one place so you can do it properly.
What changes when you let from abroad
Letting from another country doesn't change the rules, but it does change how you work:
- Language: the lease, receipts and day-to-day contact with the tenant are usually in Spanish.
- Distance: you can't drop by the flat to collect rent, look at a repair or pick up a document.
- Paperwork: the LAU (Spain's Urban Leases Act), the deposit and the rent update have their own rules, which rarely match those back home.
- Tax: as a non-resident you declare the rental income on Modelo 210, not on a Spanish income tax return.
Your language, and your tenant's
You can use Inquly in English, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French or Italian. Each tenant has their own language on their record, which they can change in the portal, and the emails they receive go out in that language. So you work in yours, and your tenant gets notices in theirs.
Lease, deposit and rent under Spanish law
Inquly includes a residential lease template that follows the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, in Spanish and in English, plus templates for the inventory, rent receipts and the deposit settlement.
- Deposit: Inquly records it on the lease and produces the settlement when the tenancy ends. Lodging it with the regional body is something you, or whoever represents you, still do yourself.
- Lease dates: the lease keeps its key dates, and on the Landlord plan you get alerts before it expires.
- Rent update: it can only be applied on each anniversary of the lease. You can work it out with the rent update calculator, which uses the INE's official indices.
Collecting rent from a distance
Inquly doesn't handle money: your tenant pays you directly, usually by bank transfer. What Inquly does is help you see what has been paid and what hasn't:
- Before the due date, on the Landlord plan, your tenant gets an email reminder.
- In their portal, if you switch it on, they see your IBAN, the payment reference and the amount outstanding on each invoice.
- When the money arrives, you mark it as paid or import your bank statement as CSV, OFX or Excel, with ready-made formats for banks such as BBVA, Santander, CaixaBank, ING, Sabadell, N26 and Revolut.
Repairs and documents without being there
On the Landlord plan, your tenant reports problems from their portal, with photos, and you track each one as a maintenance request: assign it to a local tradesperson and update its status without international phone calls. The signed lease, the inventory, the energy certificate and receipts are stored with the property, and the data is hosted in the European Union.
Modelo 210: what Inquly does and doesn't do
As a non-resident, you declare rental income under Spain's Non-Resident Income Tax (IRNR) on Modelo 210. Inquly does not file the return or act as your tax representative, and it doesn't apply for an NIE for you. What it does is record each property's income and expenses and give you exportable reports, so that you or your tax adviser can prepare the return from tidy figures.
If you live in another EU or EEA country, you can deduct your letting expenses, so it pays to keep every one of them with its invoice. Who has to file, the 19 % or 24 % rate, the deadlines, the imputed income on an empty home and when you need an NIE or a tax representative are all covered in our tax guide for non-residents letting property in Spain.
Which plan to choose
If you have a single home, start on the Free plan. If you want the tenant portal, rent reminders and lease expiry alerts, the Landlord plan covers up to 10 properties, and you can try it for 7 days without a card. All the details are on the pricing page.