If you are buying, building or letting a home in Spain, sooner or later somebody will ask you for the cédula de habitabilidad. This article covers what the certificate records, the minimum standards a home has to meet and what the whole thing costs.
There is no exact British equivalent. The nearest thing is a building control completion certificate: an official confirmation that the property is fit to be lived in, with a sound structure and adequate hygiene and sanitation. Build a house to live in, or to put on the market, and it has to clear those minimums before it counts as habitable.
It is not only a formality for the notary, either. Without it you will struggle to put the water, electricity or gas into your own name.
At Klic Arquitectos, our architecture practice in Málaga, this paperwork is routine. Here is what it actually involves.
What the habitation certificate records
The first question is usually what the document itself says. Housing standards in Spain are set region by region rather than nationally, so the exact requirements and wording vary depending on which autonomous region (comunidad autónoma) the property sits in.
Some information appears wherever you are:
- Type of dwelling: whether it is a flat in a block (multi-family housing) or a single-family house.
- Location details and the cadastral reference (referencia catastral), the code that identifies the property in the Spanish cadastre — not the same register as the Land Registry.
- Usable floor area (superficie útil): the metres genuinely given over to living space, which are not part of the structure of the house.
- The rooms and spaces of the home, each one marked with its own initial.
- Maximum occupancy: whether a room takes 1 person (5 m²), 2 people (8 m²) or more.
- The professional responsible for signing the certificate.
The three types of habitation certificate
The cédula de habitabilidad requirements shift slightly depending on which of the three certificates you need:
- First occupancy (primera ocupación). The first time a home is occupied after being built. The town hall issues it to the developer.
- First occupancy after refurbishment. For properties that have been through major refurbishment works.
- Second occupancy (segunda ocupación). For homes already built and lived in before. This is the one most resale buyers end up chasing.
Cédula de habitabilidad requirements
So what does a home have to meet in order to get one?
- A minimum usable floor area of 36 m².
- At least a dining or living room, a kitchen and a bathroom.
- A minimum ceiling height of 2.5 metres. That drops in bathrooms and kitchens, where it can come down to 2.2 metres.
- The kitchen and the bathroom have to be separated from the rest of the home. How you partition the rest is up to you.
- Provision for washing clothes, and a system for answering callers from the entrance to the building — in practice, an entryphone.
- A façade opening onto the outside of the building, so the home can be lit and ventilated.
- A minimum bedroom size of 6 m².
- Doors into rooms at least 0.7 m wide and 2 m high.
How much does a habitation certificate cost?
The other common question is the obvious one: how much does the cédula de habitabilidad cost?
There is no single answer. The price depends on the fees charged by each town hall, and on the fees of the technician who signs it, who is free to set their own rate. Even so, the procedure does not usually come to more than 200 euros.
Which is the reassuring part. The awkward part is finding out, once somebody measures up, that the home does not meet the minimums: a converted room under 6 m², a low bedroom in the roof space, a bathroom with no ventilation. That is worth knowing before you sign the deposit contract (contrato de arras), not after.
We hope this has cleared up the cédula de habitabilidad requirements. If you want to keep going, our piece on which home improvements require permits is the sensible next read.
