How to find your cadastral value

Your whole non-resident filing is built on this one number, and it is also the one owners most often cannot lay their hands on. Here is where it lives, why you cannot simply look it up, and what to do in each of the situations that leave people stuck.

What is the cadastral value?

The valor catastral is the official value the Spanish land registry, the Catastro, assigns to your property. It is two parts added together, the land and what is built on it, and it is set by the State rather than by your town hall. It is not the market value. By law it cannot exceed market value, and in practice it usually sits well below what you paid.

Do not confuse it with the valor de referencia, a separate figure that governs a different set of taxes and turns up when you buy or inherit. Your annual filing runs on the cadastral value, never on that one. We put the two side by side in cadastral value and reference value.

Where to find it

The easiest place is your IBI receipt (Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles), the annual property tax bill from your local council. Look for these terms:

• Valor catastral, the cadastral value, the number we need
• Referencia catastral, the 20 character code that identifies the property, not a value at all
• Valor catastral del suelo, the land part of the total
• Valor catastral de construcción, the construction part of the total

We need the total valor catastral, which is suelo plus construcción.

Why can I not just look it up online?

Because Spanish law treats the cadastral value as protected data. Anyone can consult the non-protected information held in the Catastro, and anyone can look up a reference value free of charge, but the cadastral value of an individual property is reserved for its owner, for whoever the owner authorises, and for those who can show a legitimate and direct interest.

So if you have spent an evening hunting for it on a public website and come up with nothing, there is nothing wrong with you or with your Spanish. It is not there to be found. Which is exactly why that receipt matters so much.

What if I pay IBI by direct debit and never see a receipt?

Very common. Four routes actually work.

• Ask for a duplicate of the bill. Your town hall, or the provincial body it has delegated collection to, can issue one. In Alicante province that body is usually SUMA.
• Use a digital certificate or Cl@ve. Either gives you access to your own protected data at the Catastro and at the tax agency. Both assume you already hold a Spanish tax number.
• Appoint someone in Spain to act for you. A representative with the right authority can obtain it on your behalf, which is what we do for owners who never come over.
• Go in person. Catastro offices, and the Puntos de Información Catastral hosted in public buildings and town halls, provide the electronic means free of charge if you would rather do it face to face.

An honest note on the second route. The tax agency's own guidance assumes you already have a NIF or NIE, both for electronic identification and for filing the Modelo 210. We could not find an official source stating what happens if you do not have a NIE yet, so we make no claim either way. What does not depend on it: the cadastral value is printed on your IBI receipt, and you can always appoint a representative in Spain or go in person to a Catastro office.

Your escritura is worth a look too, since it often carries the cadastral reference. Treat any value in it as historic rather than current.

My property is new and has no cadastral value yet

This one catches off-plan buyers on the Costa Blanca every year. You complete in the spring, the year closes, and the Catastro still has not notified a value for your home. There is a rule for exactly that, and it is not to sit and wait.

Where the property has no cadastral value, or the value has not been notified to you, on the accrual date of 31 December, the tax agency takes as the imputation base 50% of the higher of the acquisition price and any value checked by the administration for the purposes of other taxes. In those cases the percentage applied is 1.1%.

It is a different base and a different calculation from everyone else's, and it is worth getting right in your first year rather than discovering it in your third. If that is your situation, say so when you start and we will handle it.

Why does the year of the last revision matter?

The imputation rate depends on your municipality, not on your individual property:

• If the town's values were revised through a general collective valuation that came into force in the tax period or in the ten tax periods before it: the rate is 1.1%
• Otherwise: the rate is 2.0%

That distinction matters more than it looks. Having your own cadastral value revised, after building work for example, does not get you the lower rate on its own, and applying 1.1% when your town was never generally revalued means declaring less than you owe. We explain how to check your own town in the guide to the 1.1% and 2% rates.

You do not need to work any of this out yourself. When you upload your IBI receipt, we determine the correct rate for your property.