Canary Islands Would Require Ten Years on the Municipal Register to Buy a Home

The Canary Islands government has attached a number to its plan to restrict home buying in the archipelago: ten uninterrupted years of registration on a municipal padrón, or fifteen years where that registration has been broken, before anyone can acquire residential property there. The threshold surfaced in reporting on 15 October, two days after regional president Fernando Clavijo confirmed to the regional parliament that a decree law had been drafted and sent to Madrid with no cap, quota or qualifying test published.

What it means for a foreign buyer

The test is residence, not nationality, and that is the detail to absorb before anything else. A British or German owner of a holiday home in Tenerife is caught by it, and so is a Spaniard from Madrid or Seville who has never lived on the islands. Someone who moved to Gran Canaria five years ago and lives there full time would not qualify either, because the clock runs on the padrón entry rather than on tax residency or nationality. Proof would be the certificado de empadronamiento, a document councils already issue, so the test is one a notary could verify at the signing table. The sanction attached to it is the part that should change your sequencing: a purchase by a buyer who cannot produce the registration history would be void and could not be entered in the land register. That is a different order of risk from a surcharge or a transfer tax. A transaction that cannot be registered cannot be mortgaged, insured against third-party claims, or resold.

Nothing here is in force, and the draft carries no transition relief for deals in progress. If you are between private contract and escritura on a Canary property, that gap is your exposure, and the draft as reported gives no grandfathering to anyone sitting in it. Buyers planning volume should also note the cap that travels with the residence test: even a fully qualifying resident would be limited to two homes, and they would have to sit in different municipalities, one as a primary residence and one as a holiday property. A third unit, or two in the same municipality, falls outside the draft. Companies would be restricted to firms whose business purpose is selling or letting to individuals, which closes the corporate wrapper that non-residents commonly use. Inheritances are exempt.

Complete and register now if you are mid-deal, because the draft offers nothing to buyers caught in the gap.

What changed

The threshold itself is what is new. On 13 October Clavijo told the regional parliament that the text existed and had gone to the Spanish government, but no cap, percentage or price threshold had been published, and the scope question was open. The 15 October reporting supplies the qualifying test: ten uninterrupted years on the municipal register, rising to fifteen years where the registration has been intermittent.

Three further provisions came with it. Buyers would be capped at two properties in different municipalities. Corporate buyers would be limited to companies whose stated purpose is selling or letting residential property to individuals. Inheritances would be carved out. The measure is drafted to run for ten years from the date it takes effect.

The mechanism

The instrument is a draft law titled Ley para garantizar el acceso a la vivienda a los residentes en Canarias. Its central design decision is the pivot to the padrón. An earlier version of the proposal ran into the European treaty guarantees of free movement of capital and non-discrimination by nationality, so the revised text replaces any nationality test with municipal registration, a criterion that formally applies to Spanish and foreign buyers alike. The regional government also invokes Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the provision permitting specific measures for the outermost regions.

The Canary Islands is a region and cannot enact this itself, which is why the text went to Madrid rather than being gazetted at home. The Cortes has been dissolved ahead of the general election on 29 November, so a royal decree-law carrying the measure would need the backing of the Diputación Permanente, the standing body that sits when parliament does not. Spain asked the European Commission in January to permit limits on purchases by non-residents, and no decision has been announced. A separate proposed reform of the Framework Law on Local Government, headed for the Council of Ministers, would let councils buy or rent property from non-EU nationals who have lived in the municipality for less than two years, levy tourist taxes, and ban holiday lets in designated areas.

Context

Non-residents buy freely in the Canary Islands today. The requirements are a foreigner identification number, a notarised deed and the standard regional transfer tax, with no residence qualification and no nationality screen. The islands are also one of the markets where foreign demand fell hardest this year: Canary purchases by foreign buyers dropped 20.3 percent in the first half of 2026 on notary data, among the steepest regional falls in Spain. The proposal arrives alongside a national housing package that was re-enacted by decree in October after Congress voted down its first version, and which extended a purchase ban on investment funds and owners of more than ten homes to the end of 2030.