Tourist licences in Orihuela Costa – News

Finally Ana received good news from the Town Hall today regarding tourist licences in Orihuela Costa for Spanish solutions clients. 

Two months ago we were told that they could no longer keep up with the demand in the Orihuela Costa area for people looking to rent out their Spanish homes.

All the information about getting the Tourism Licence in Valencia Community

Why the Orihuela Costa town hall stopped the tourist licences?

It turns out that the Orihuela Costa Town Hall (Playa Flamenca) has no specific department for this service. Literally this was something new for them to have to deal with without any new staff. The result; chaos.

Another problem is that they don’t charge for the service in Orihuela so it quickly became a nuisance. For example in Torrevieja and San Miguel where we are continuing to get licences they charge around 50 euro. The cost in Los Montesinos is 75 euro.

Anyway, the delays meant we could no longer give our clients an exact date when they would have their compatibility certificate. Without this we can not apply for the tourism licences so we had a bottleneck.

The Spanish government in 2015 made a law saying this delay could not be any more than three months.

We did not know what to advise our clients to do but luckily most of them lodged the application, to get their name on the queue. Some clients continued to rent without the certificate, against our advice, opening themselves to substantial fines. We told them not to. Sometimes you just have to accept the process and do things properly.

Many websites like Bookings. com no longer take advertising from clients in Spain without the certificate of compatibility (at least) being in place. With the three month rule however we started applying for the tourism licences even before we got the cert of compatibility and today we got good news!

What happens now with the tourist licence in Orihuela Costa?

Orihuela Costa town hall has cleared two months of the seven months backlog and we are back in business for getting tourism licences.  We got 15 certificates unblocked today.

They claim they are no longer too busy to deal with as many tourism licence applications as we can send to them. We intend to test the theory. In reality thre are applications dating back to last December which are still in the process. Of course it’s not in our hands and we are just telling our clients the information that we have been given.

Can I do it myself?

You can apply yourself without Spanish Solutions of course but naturally we think it’s a big time saver to use us. You’ll invariably end up with the wrong documents, forms filled in incorrectly, back and forth trips to the Town Hall, and wasting time.

We don’t think that you bought a house in Spain to spend it in a queue in Playa Flamenca town hall, you should be on the beach…

If, like us, you think having your tourism licence in place, and done correctly, makes sense, please get in touch with Ana or Nicola in our La Zenia office.

All the information about getting the Tourism Licence in Valencia Community

Tourist Licence in Murcia

We have many clients who rent their property in Polaris World, Los Alcazares, Torre Pacheco, La Manga etc.

Gema has been onto the relevant town halls in these areas and…. they make it even easier to get tourism licences in Murcia!

We can do it online and it looks like right now we don’t have to pay any tax to the Town hall to get the relevant certificate.

Using the three month rule mentioned above they promised Gema that if the delays are longer than that due to an influx of applications, they will issue all Spanish Solutions clients with a provisional number meaning they can, in the Murcia area, start advertising their property for rent, legally!

We mention Polaris World as we hear the resorts are booming with clients, families and golfers. It seems like great value there too. Well, most importantly our Polaris World owning clients can get their tourism licences quickly and cheaply.

We are offering special deals for clients who need certificate of habitations, and multiple unit owners. Like everything, the sooner you start the process the sooner it’s finished.

Special thanks to Ana and Gema for compiling the information and helping to make sense of this for our thousands of Spanish property owning clients.  It makes sense if you own a property in Spain and you are not getting enough personal use from it, you may as well get a rental return.

Contact Spanish Solutions today and see how we can help you.

There are two types of Tourist Licences

Last point on tourism licences. There are two types; AT and VT. Ana has informed me that if you apply for the tourism licence through a rental agency or estate agent, you may have the wrong licence in the sense that you can only ever rent through that agency. It’s illegal to rent privately with an agents licence and Airbnb will not allow you to advertise your rental property in their website if it starts with AT.

We strongly recommend you get the personal licence, giving you the option to rent through the agent, through different agencies or privately.  Keep your options open. Agents are not doing it on purpose I believe, they are just not so familiar with the rules and you don’t really want to be married to one specific agent.  If you have the incorrect licence we can help you to get the tourist licence in Orihuela Costa, Alicante and Murcia.

Good luck with your property rental in Spain, please tell us how we can help.