Tourist rental licence (VUT)
The two stages, in order: first whether the zone still allows it, then the registration.
Letting a home to holiday guests in the Valencian Community is not one procedure but two, in sequence, and the first decides whether the second ever happens. The council rules on whether tourist use fits at that address; only then does the responsible declaration go to the regional tourism authority and the property enter the register.
A vivienda de uso turístico — VUT — is defined by article 65.1 of Law 15/2018 as a whole property let for a price, immediately available, for tourist purposes, for ten days or fewer to the same guest. Two things follow. The property is let whole — letting by the room is not allowed — and above that ten-day threshold it stops being a VUT and falls under a different regime.
The ten days: where tourist use ends and seasonal letting begins
This is worth pausing on, because it is the line that decides everything else. The threshold in article 65 is not a guideline: it is ten days or fewer, counted continuously to the same tenant. From day eleven there is no tourist home at all but a seasonal letting — arrendamiento de temporada, article 3 of the Urban Leases Act — and it runs down an entirely different track.
That track skips almost everything this page describes. A seasonal letting is not entered on the regional tourism register: no number, no badge at the door, no responsible declaration, no municipal compatibility report. And — the part almost nobody joins up — municipal zoning does not reach it either: Altea's ordinance governs «the implantation of tourist-use homes», and a seasonal letting is not one. Where a zone is closed to tourist use, seasonal letting remains possible.
That said, we do not present it as a shortcut, because it cuts four ways:
- Ten days is the formal line, not the substance. If the property is marketed through tourist channels, immediately available and for tourist purposes, the authorities can reclassify it as a tourist home and penalise it as unlicensed supply, whatever the contract says about eleven days.
- There is no number to give the platforms. With the national register struck down in May 2026, and the regional one covering tourist homes only, a seasonal letting has no code to show. And advertising on a tourist portal is precisely the evidence used to reclassify it: seasonal lettings belong on rental portals, not on an OTA.
- The boundary is policed in both directions. Since 2024 there are grounds to strike a property off the register once it is found to be let as a home or seasonally. You cannot hold the number and use it for the other thing.
- The commonhold question is contested. Article 17.12 of the Horizontal Property Act subjects to the three-fifths vote «the activity referred to in article 5.e)» of the Urban Leases Act, which is tourist use; seasonal letting is article 3, a different thing. On a literal reading no agreement would be needed. But the opposite is being argued, and a building's own statutes may restrict it anyway: this is not an answer to rely on without a lawyer.
And the obvious: the contract, the deposit and the tax treatment of a seasonal letting are not those of a tourist home, and there we are not the ones to advise you. What we can tell you, which is the planning half, is whether your zone still allows tourist use — and, where it does not, that seasonal letting does not depend on it.
Stage one: planning compatibility
This is where most applications fall, which is why it always comes first. That same article 65.1 requires a favourable municipal planning compatibility report for tourist use, the property's own individual cadastral reference, and any municipal permits that apply.
The council issues the report, and it states the full address, the cadastral reference, the classification of the land, the permitted planning use and its own conclusion — favourable or not. It comes stamped with a CSV code, and that code is what the later application refers to. We handle it as part of our planning reports. Favourable, and stage two begins; unfavourable, and there is nothing to prepare.
One point the regulation takes the trouble to spell out: a favourable report replaces no other licence. It exists so the tourism authority knows the use fits the local plan, and it leaves every other permit the property may need exactly where it was.
The answer depends on the municipality and on the street, because the law lets councils cap the number of tourist homes per building, sector, area or zone through their planning. Altea was among the first to use that power: it suspended new compatibility reports in January 2024, having already granted more than 2,200, and since 1 July 2026 complementary ordinance 4-8 has been in force, published in the Alicante provincial gazette, issue 121. It grades urban land not by tourist pressure alone but by a territorial vulnerability indicator that combines the share of tourist homes with the share of main residences and with housing density, so a neighbourhood lived in year-round weighs heavier. Out of it come four grades — vulnerable, high risk, medium risk and low — with a different limit in each. The municipal map viewer carries a tourist-homes layer, and knowing which zone a property sits in comes before everything else.
If the property stands on rural land, the bar is higher still: on top of the report it needs a declaración de interés comunitario — a regional consent attributing tourist use to that land — or proof that an exemption has been applied for, plus any environmental permit, all before registration. This is the part that catches out buyers of country houses bought with letting in mind.
Altea: the one opening left in the restricted zones
The ordinance closes six zones to new tourist homes — Altea's old town, Clot de Mingot, Piteres, Carrer La Mar, the Avenida quarter and the seafront — but it writes one way through into the text itself: implantation is allowed where it amounts to the recovery of traditional architectural heritage, in existing, lawfully built properties. That is clause 7.a, and clause 8 sets out what counts.
All of it has to be met; a refurbishment is not enough:
- Integral rehabilitation, which the ordinance defines as work pursuing all three aims at once: structural, functional — including removing barriers and improving accessibility — and bringing the property up to the habitability standards of Decree 151/2009.
- A residential building of traditional materials and techniques that had lost the conditions to be used as a home.
- That has not been altered in ways which cost it its standing as traditional architecture.
- And that sits within a traditional historic centre, or is listed individually in the Cultural Heritage section of the municipal protection catalogue, at any level of protection.
In practice that means the old town of Altea, which is a traditional historic centre by definition; in the other five zones the route exists only where that particular building is listed. And it is worth saying what the exception does not do: it does not lift the caps in the high- and medium-risk zones, which are numerical and admit no heritage exception. Where a sub-zone is already over its residential pressure index, restoring heritage opens nothing.
That catalogue, moreover, is no longer a promise: Altea's Plan General Estructural came into force on 17 August 2026, and the planning rules of the Protection Catalogue, Cultural Heritage section, were published with it — precisely the document the ordinance points at. It is worth saying what the new plan did not do as well: it leaves the tourist-home regime untouched. Ordinance 4-8 amended the 1982 plan's ordinances, which are the detailed layer of planning, and that layer stays in force until a detailed plan is approved. The new plan has not repealed it.
Three further conditions decide whether it is real. If the building stands in the coastal protection easement, a change of use is not possible, bar the exceptional case in the third transitional provision of the Coasts Act. The ordinance also sets an absolute ceiling of 12 tourist homes per 100 dwellings across the whole municipality, and Altea currently stands at 9.8. And the council may review any zone's vulnerability grade at any time and update the pressure index yearly, by mayoral resolution and without amending the General Plan — the opening can narrow with no planning procedure at all.
The order of the job changes, because the rules chain it that way: first the integral rehabilitation project and the building work, then the second occupancy certificate — the ordinance requires a valid permit for residential use, and the building that earns the exception is precisely the one without it — and only then the compatibility report, expressly invoking clause 7.a. It is not a form-filling exercise but an architectural project, and inside the walled town it carries heritage consents as well: Altea's old town is a listed historic ensemble.
Stage two: the declaration and the register
With the favourable report in hand, the responsible declaration goes to Turisme Comunitat Valenciana and the property is entered on the tourism register with its number. The declaration entitles you to operate from the day it is filed: the registration number follows later, but the activity does not wait for it.
One thing surprises almost everyone: the regional government charges no fee for registering the property or for renewing it. That part is free. What a council charges for issuing the compatibility report is separate, and set by its own local tax bylaw.
To get that far, three things have to be in order, and each is a job in itself:
- The second occupancy certificate, or the first if the building is new: the regulation requires the property to hold its occupancy licence or the equivalent declaration. Without it there is no tourist licence.
- The energy certificate, which in practice is done at the same time and on a single visit.
- Public liability insurance covering harm to guests and third parties arising from the activity. Since 2026 the rule is explicit that a residential policy will not do — the cover on an ordinary home is unlikely to qualify.
The community of owners, which can stop all of it
This is what ends more projects than any technical obstacle, and no architect can fix it. Since 3 April 2025, the Horizontal Property Act requires an owner who wants to let a flat to holiday guests to obtain the community's express approval first. It used to be allowed unless the statutes forbade it; now permission has to be given.
- The agreement carries on three fifths of the owners representing three fifths of the participation quotas.
- By that same majority the community may add a surcharge of up to 20% to that home's share of common expenses.
- Anyone letting without express approval can be required by the community's president to stop immediately, on notice of court action.
Those already operating keep their position. The law states that these agreements have no retroactive effect, and adds a specific provision for owners already carrying on the activity under the tourism rules before that date. Put plainly: having been in order early is now worth something, because it is a right the flat across the landing can no longer obtain without persuading three fifths of the building.
Since July 2026 the requirement has tightened from the other side as well: the community's agreement is now a condition of entry on the regional register. It is no longer only a matter between neighbours — it is a document that has to be produced.
Five years, and the renewal everyone forgets
Registration is no longer open-ended. It runs five years from the day the declaration is filed, and to carry on you must file a renewal declaration within the month before it expires. It is not a formality: it has to come with a new, up-to-date planning compatibility report and a statement that the property meets the requirements in force at the time of renewal — not the ones that applied when it was first registered.
That is the risk nobody sees coming, and the reason not to leave it to the final month: between one date and the next the municipality may have zoned, as Altea has. Let the five years lapse and the property is struck off, and getting back on is not a renewal — it is starting again under whatever the rules say that day.
What you have to keep up once it is registered
Registration is not a certificate to file away. It brings obligations that the regional government itself lists in the document it issues on registering, and they belong to whoever runs the activity: we do not handle them, they are yours or your managing agent's. What we do is go through them with you on handover, so you do not meet them for the first time in an inspection.
- The badge at the entrance. A vinyl sticker displayed visibly, inside or out — red Pantone 485, 200 × 276 mm, with the registration number across the top; brown for rural tourist homes. It is downloaded from the regional tourism website.
- The registration number in every advert. Listings must carry the registration number and the exact location, and meet the standards of truthfulness, objectivity and good faith. That applies to whichever portal you list on and to your own site.
- Complaint forms — hojas de reclamaciones — available to guests.
- Reporting your guests. Guest details have to be sent to the police under Royal Decree 933/2021, through SES Hospedajes, the Ministry of the Interior's own platform. This is the duty most owners believe disappeared when the national register was struck down; the two are unrelated, and this one is very much alive.
- Keeping the property as it was when registered. Facilities and services must stay in line with the conditions its classification was based on — if they do not, removal proceedings can be opened — and any change affecting capacity, a bedroom more or two beds fewer, calls for a fresh responsible declaration.
Buying a property that already has one
The licence does not travel with the deed. Since 8 August 2024, when a registered tourist home changes hands — regardless of when it was first registered — the rules in force apply to the new owner, and a fresh responsible declaration has to be filed with its own favourable compatibility report. Which means an advert reading “sold with tourist licence” deserves a close look: what is being sold is a house, and the permission goes back through the council.
The exception is inheritance: where the property passes on death, a change-of-ownership declaration is all that is required.
The national register that no longer exists
It deserves its own heading because half the internet still says otherwise. Royal Decree 1312/2024 created a national Single Register of short-term rentals, with an NRUA number that platforms were to require from July 2025. The Supreme Court annulled it on 21 May 2026, holding that the State had no competence to create a national register overlapping the regional ones — the challenge was brought by the Generalitat Valenciana itself. There is a press release from the judiciary if you want to check it.
What survives: the digital single window and the platforms' duty to pass on data. What does not change: the register that counts here is the regional one, and the duty to report guest details to the authorities is unaffected — a separate obligation that has nothing to do with this register.
If you are already letting without a licence
The advice is to regularise sooner rather than later, for the reason above: each new rule applies to whoever comes next, while those already registered keep their position. Every month that passes, the bar for getting in is a little higher. The first step is finding out whether the zone still allows it; from there we know whether there is a route at all.
The job, step by step
We handle the whole procedure, and it comes in five steps, in this order:
- The planning compatibility report, which decides whether there is a procedure at all.
- The second occupancy certificate, if the property did not have one.
- The energy certificate, if it did not have one either.
- The responsible declaration to the regional government, through to the registration number on the Tourism Register.
- Handover of the paperwork, explained: what you are holding, what it says, and what you have to keep up from that day on.
And this is what we need from you:
- The title deed or a nota simple, and the owner's details.
- The second occupancy certificate and the energy certificate, if you already have them.
- The community's agreement, where the property is part of a commonhold building.
- The authorisation for us to act, signed with a digital certificate. This is what wastes the most time: a scanned signature is not accepted. It can be signed in Adobe Reader or, more easily, at DocuVeri.es.
We do the rest, and none of it needs anyone to turn up anywhere: the compatibility report to the council and the declaration to Turisme, each through its own electronic office.
Timescales
Two are set by law and worth writing down: registration lasts five years, and the renewal is filed within the month before it expires. How long a given council takes over the compatibility report is not something anyone here controls, so we do not promise it. We work from Altea, and cover Alfaz del Pi, La Nucía, Polop, Calpe, Benissa, Moraira, Finestrat and Callosa d'en Sarrià, among others.
Frequently asked questions
I am buying a property advertised with a tourist licence. Do I keep it?
Not automatically. Since 8 August 2024, when a registered tourist home changes hands — whenever it was first registered — the rules in force apply to the new owner, and a fresh responsible declaration has to be filed together with a favourable municipal compatibility report. So “sold with tourist licence” is worth reading closely: what you buy is the house, and the permission is examined again. The one exception is inheritance, where a change-of-ownership declaration is enough.
How long does the licence last?
Registration entitles you to operate for five years from the day the declaration is filed. To carry on, a renewal declaration must be filed within the month before it expires, together with a new and up-to-date planning compatibility report, stating that the property meets the requirements in force at that moment — not the ones that applied when it was first registered. Miss the deadline and the property is struck off the register. It is article 23 bis of Decree 10/2021, and it is what catches most owners out.
Do I need the neighbours' permission?
If the property is part of a comunidad de propietarios — a building held in commonhold — then yes. Since 3 April 2025 the owner must first obtain the community's express approval, carried by three fifths of the owners representing three fifths of the participation quotas. The community may also charge up to 20% more in common expenses for that home. And since July 2026 that agreement is a condition of registration: without it, the property does not go on the register.
What if I was already letting before that rule came in?
Owners already carrying on the activity before 3 April 2025 under the tourism rules may continue. The law says expressly that these community agreements have no retroactive effect, and adds a specific provision for those already operating. Being in order early has quietly become an asset: a neighbour starting today needs a three-fifths majority that may never come.
Do I still need the national registration number?
No. The Supreme Court annulled the national Single Register of short-term rentals on 21 May 2026, holding that the State had no power to create a register overlapping the regional ones, so the NRUA number is no longer required to advertise a property. What does still apply is the regional register — Turisme Comunitat Valenciana, the one we file with — and the separate duty to report guest details to the authorities, which is a different matter altogether.
Can I apply without the second occupancy certificate?
No. The regulation requires the property to hold its occupancy licence, or the equivalent second occupancy declaration under Decree 12/2021. If it does not have one, that is the first job — and if there is unlicensed building work on top, it has to be legalised before anything else.
My property is in an Altea zone where new licences are closed. Is there anything to be done?
There may be, and it is the only opening the ordinance leaves. In the vulnerable zones, implantation is allowed where it amounts to the recovery of traditional architectural heritage: an integral rehabilitation — structure, function and habitability together — of a traditional building that had lost the conditions to be used as a home, either within a traditional historic centre or individually listed. In practice that means Altea's old town. Two caveats: it does not work in the high- or medium-risk zones, where the limit is numerical and admits no heritage exception, and it does not work where the building stands in the coastal protection easement.