Buying a house in Mallorca with a tourist licence (ETV): what to check before you sign

What you are buying

The licence is known as ETV, for estancias turísticas en viviendas. The owner files a responsible declaration, the DRIAT, with the Consell de Mallorca. The house is entered in the island register of tourist establishments and receives a number, and that number has to appear on every advert.

The declaration rests on tourist places, one for each guest the house may take, which the owner acquired from the island's pool of places. Under article 88 of the Balearic tourism act, the places stay tied to the property until it is definitively deregistered. That is why the licence passes with the house: the buyer does not apply again, but notifies the Consell of the change of owner.

It also explains what can go wrong. A registration is only as good as the declaration behind it. If an essential statement in that declaration was inaccurate, the Consell can cancel the entry, and the places return to the administration. That risk stays with the house, whoever owns it.

Which licence is it? The date decides

Not all licences are alike. The Consell's own guidance sorts them by the date they were applied for:

• VT licences, the older holiday-home registrations: they never need renewing.
• ETV applied for in 2006 under the 2005 act, for single-family houses: renewed every six years, with the request filed two months before expiry.
• ETV filed between 22 July 2012 and 31 July 2017: no renewal.
• ETV filed from 1 August 2018 for a single-family house: no renewal.
• ETVPL, for a dwelling in a building with shared access or common parts: valid for five years at a time. The renewal has to be communicated during the month before the term ends. If it is not, the dwelling is deregistered automatically and the places are lost.
• ETV60, for letting a main home up to 60 days a year: also five years, and tied to the house being the main home of the person who lets it. It is of no use to a buyer who will not live there.

Ask for the registration number and its date before anything else. A licence that is close to a renewal date, or that has missed one, is a different purchase.

Seven checks before the deposit

• The registration. The number, the address and cadastral reference it covers, the registered holder and the date. The island register is published as open data, with each dwelling's number, date, municipality, rooms and places, which is a quick first look. The answer that counts comes from the administrative file.
• The places. A house can be let for no more guests than the places shown on its certificate of habitability, extra beds are not allowed, and there must be one bathroom for every four places. A listing that sleeps ten in a house registered for six is an infringement, and it tells you how the income you were shown was earned.
• The building against its papers. Tourist letting is barred in any dwelling with a final sanction for a serious planning infringement, until legality is restored. On rural land this is the common trap: an extension, a pool or an annexe that was never legalised. Compare what is built with the Land Registry, the cadastre and the building licence.
• Fines and open files. The Consell will not resolve a change of owner for a dwelling with an unpaid tourism fine. Ask the seller for evidence that no sanction proceedings are open, and check it.
• Whether it has really been let. The Consell can deregister a dwelling where tourist letting has stopped for three consecutive years. Ask for the tourist stay tax returns, the platform statements and the guest reports of recent seasons. They also show you what the business is worth.
• If it is a flat. Check when the five-year term ends, and check the community of owners. Letting needs statutes that do not forbid it and an agreement of the majority of owners and of shares. The same majority can withdraw it, and letting must then stop within a year. In the municipality of Palma, tourist letting of flats is prohibited. Since 16 April 2025 no new declaration can be filed anywhere in the islands for a dwelling in a building under horizontal ownership, other than terraced and semi-detached houses, so a flat licence that lapses cannot be replaced.
• What you take on from day one. An energy certificate at the minimum rating the act requires (F for buildings from before 2008, D for later ones), individual water and electricity meters, liability insurance, a telephone answered 24 hours a day, the log of cleaning and maintenance, the reporting of guests to the police and the tourist stay tax. If the house falls short on the day you take over, the breach is yours.

Put it in the contract

The deposit contract is where the buyer still has leverage. We make the licence an essential condition of the sale, in the deposit contract and again in the deed. The seller warrants that the registration is in force, that the places and the declaration match the house as it stands and that no file is open, and undertakes to cooperate in the change of owner. The contract should also say what happens if any of that proves untrue before completion: normally, that the buyer may withdraw and recover the deposit.

After completion, the change of owner is notified to the Consell de Mallorca. Failing to notify it is an infringement in itself. At the same time the insurance, the listings, the guest reporting and the tourist stay tax move into the new owner's name.

Can I buy without a licence and apply for one?

Sometimes, but do not pay for the hope. The acquisition of new places was suspended in 2022. Since April 2025 a temporary pool hands out again, one for one, the places of dwellings that leave the register, so the island's total does not grow. In March 2026 the Consell de Mallorca offered 1,069 places for the whole island. In all, 721 applications were admitted and their order was decided by public draw on 8 June 2026, with a waiting list open for six months. Further calls depend on how many places come back.

To apply at all, the house must stand in a zone declared eligible, be at least five years old and have been in private residential use throughout, and it must never have been protected housing. As a rule, new tourist letting is not admitted on protected rural land, and it is not admitted in flats.

And the tax

The income from a licensed let is declared on Tax Form 210, now once a year, in April of the following year. Residents of the EU, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein pay 19% on the rent less expenses. Everyone else pays 24%, and the tax office applies it to the gross rent, a position now before the Tribunal Supremo. Build that into the yield before you agree a price.

We verify the licence before purchase, with access to the administrative file and a written report, and we draft the clauses. What the service covers is on our holiday rental page, and the taxes on the purchase itself are on buying and selling property.

Sources: Ley 8/2012 of 19 July on tourism in the Balearic Islands, articles 23, 50, 51, 52, 85, 88 and 118; Decreto ley 4/2025 of 11 April, second additional provision and second transitional provision; Decreto ley 3/2022 and Ley 3/2022; Consorci Borsa d'Allotjaments Turístics (Consell de Mallorca), guidance on licence types and renewals, and announcements of 6 and 20 March 2026 on the temporary pool of places; public draw of 8 June 2026; register of tourist dwellings of Mallorca, open data catalogue of the Govern de les Illes Balears.

This page is general information and reflects the rules in force on the date shown. It is not advice and does not replace an assessment of your own case.