Second occupancy certificate

Second occupancy is the declaración responsable — a declaration made under the owner's own responsibility — showing that a home already built still meets the conditions under which it was first occupied. In the Valencian Community it is the document that does the job many people still call the cédula de habitabilidad, and the one a buyer, a tenant or a utility company will ask you for.

It is not a licence. Under Decree 12/2021 the regime is a declaration, and that changes the part that matters: the home can be occupied and used from the day it is filed — article 10.1 — without prejudice to the council checking afterwards. The document some councils send out weeks later is that check, not the permission.

When it is needed

Article 6.1 sets the moment precisely. It has to be renewed ten years after the first occupation, and only when one of these applies:

• every time the property is transferred again;
• when a new supply contract for drinking water, gas or electricity has to be set up.

The same article settles the doubt that comes up most: switching supplier is not a new contract, so it triggers nothing.

In practice it comes up on a sale, on a letting, when the utilities of a long-closed house are put back on, and with the tourist rental licence, which is not granted on a home that cannot show it is fit for use.

First occupation as well

The same decree governs the first occupation, and we handle that too. It applies on completion of a new build, and equally where an existing home has undergone extension, alteration or refurbishment that changes its architectural or structural configuration, or where a legalisation has just been completed. Anyone who has legalised building work usually needs this next.

What is filed

The core of it is the certificate from a competent technician stating that the building — or the part of it in individual use — matches the conditions behind the previous occupancy title. We draw it up after visiting the property and surveying whatever needs surveying.

And we take it to the end: we file the declaration ourselves, through the electronic office of the council concerned and under the authorisation you sign at the start. Each council has its own form and its own list of documents, and that is the part of the procedure you never have to learn.

Two things are worth knowing in advance. First, that certificate is valid for a maximum of three months from signature — article 8.2 — so ordering it far ahead achieves nothing. Second, where the regulations require it, a copy of the Libro del Edificio or of the building evaluation report goes with it.

The strongest proof of a home's legality

Filing this declaration means checking that what stands matches what was authorised, and that is where discrepancies surface: floor areas that do not agree with the deed, extensions built without a licence, alterations that changed the configuration of the property. Anything of that kind has to be put right first, and where the issue is unlicensed work, that means legalisation before anything else.

Seen the other way round, that demand is its great virtue: a home with its second occupancy in order is a home whose legality has been checked document by document. As evidence to put in front of a buyer, nothing else comes close.

What you provide

• The title deed or a nota simple from the land registry.
• Plans of the property; if there are none, we draw them.
• Identification and a signed authorisation.
• Recent water and electricity bills.
• Proof of the last IBI payment.

It is usually ordered alongside the energy certificate, because the occasion that forces one — selling, letting, bringing a closed-up house back into use — almost always forces the other. They are handled together, on a single visit.

Timings

The visit takes an hour at most and the certificate is drawn up within two or three days; from there the declaration is filed and the home can be used. We work out of Altea and cover Alfaz del Pi, La Nucía, Polop, Calpe, Benissa, Moraira, Finestrat and Callosa d'en Sarrià, among others.