Buying Property on a Golf Resort in Spain

On a resort, the property is the part you can see and the smaller part of what you are buying. The rest is a community you are joining, a set of shared facilities somebody has to maintain, a service charge you do not control, and — frequently — rules about what you may do with your own home, including whether you may let it.

None of that is a reason not to buy. Resorts are popular for good reasons: they are built to a standard, they are maintained, they are secure, and the facilities are genuinely there. But the things that go wrong on resorts are almost never about the property, and they are almost always visible in documents a buyer can ask for before committing.

What you are joining

A Spanish property in a development belongs to a comunidad de propietarios — a legally constituted owners' community that maintains the shared parts and levies a charge to do it.

Three things follow that surprise people:

You cannot opt out. The charge is an obligation of ownership, not a subscription. And unpaid charges attach to the property itself: under the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal a buyer answers for predecessors' unpaid general expenses with the property acquired, limited by statute to the elapsed part of the year of purchase plus a defined number of preceding years. That liability is capped, but it is real, which is why establishing the seller's position is not a formality.

Decisions are collective. Works, budgets and rule changes are decided at the owners' meeting under majorities. If you are not there, or cannot follow the Spanish, you are still bound.

Resorts have more shared infrastructure than an ordinary block — pools, gardens, security, roads, sometimes a clubhouse. More to maintain means a larger charge and more that can eventually need replacing.

The documents that tell you the truth

Every row is a document or a certificate a buyer can request. A seller or agent who resists any of them has told you something.

Table 1

Source: Ley de Propiedad Horizontal art. 9 — the transferor must declare being current with general community expenses and supply a certificate, without which the public deed cannot be authorised unless the acquirer expressly waives it; and the acquirer answers with the property for predecessors' unpaid general expenses, subject to a statutory time limit. Verified October 2026. No fee, charge or yield is published.

The accounts tell you what it costs. The minutes tell you what it is about to cost. Most resort disappointments are in the minutes before they are in the price.

Golf, and the thing to check about the course

Owning on a resort usually does not include playing on it. Club membership and green-fee arrangements are typically separate, sometimes with a preferential rate for owners and sometimes not. If golf is the reason for the purchase, establish the arrangement in writing rather than inferring it from the brochure.

More importantly, establish who owns the course. A course owned and run by a third party is a business whose fortunes affect your view, your amenity and arguably your value — and a course that closes or changes hands is a known failure mode on Spanish resorts. The question to ask is not how good the course is, but what happens to the land, the amenity and your charge if it stops operating.

Letting, which is where expectations break

Many resort purchases are justified partly by letting income. Two separate things can prevent it:

The community's own rules. Statutes may restrict or prohibit short-term tourist letting. This is a matter for the community and it can change by decision of the owners.

Regional tourist licensing. Spain regulates tourist accommodation at regional level, and the rules differ by community, have been tightened in several, and in some areas new licences are restricted or unavailable.

The practical instruction: if letting income is part of why you are buying, verify both before you commit, for the specific property and the current rules — not for the region generally and not as it was two years ago. An agent's assurance is not verification.

What this page will not tell you

Any figure. Not a community charge, not a membership cost, not a yield, not an IBI amount. They are specific to the property and they move, and the page's whole argument is that you must get the real ones from the real documents. A published range would be the thing that stops a reader asking.

Which resorts are good. We have not visited them and we have no residents to quote. Naming developments would be invention or advertising.

Whether a particular letting arrangement is permitted. That is a determination about a specific property under current regional rules, and it belongs to a lawyer who has read both. What a property lawyer does sets out how that work is commissioned, and buying a holiday home covers the wider decision this sits inside.

Frequently asked questions

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