Luxury rental property in Spain with swimming pool, palm trees and ocean sea view
Why should you care about the Minimum Wage? It could remove your property from the Rent Controls, (Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos (LAU)), that’s why you should care.
‘Luxury Rentals’ are excluded from the LAU if they are EITHER 300 sq m or more OR the annual rent is more than 5.5 times the annual minimum wage (SMI).
The Government has announced that the SMI for 2026 is 17,094€ euro gross. Therefore, even if the property is less than 300 sq m (presumably the Catastral size), as long as the annual rent is more than 94,017€ per year (7,835€ per month), it ESCAPES the possibility of the tenant demanding of rights to:
- minimum duration (5 or 7 years)
- compulsory extensions
- rent‑increase caps
- “stressed zone” price controls
- tenant‑protection for habitual residences
IMPORTANT – Bear in mind that the SMI changes each year, so if the rent hasn’t been increased, a property that escaped in previous years due to the rent being above the threshold, may now be below that and subject to all the controls.
