Renovating a Property in Valencia
Most flats in Valencia's older barrios were wired, plumbed and tiled decades ago. This is the guide to what a reforma really costs, which permit you need, how to hire a builder you can trust, and when your neighbours get a vote.
Why a reforma here is not like a renovation back home
The word you will hear constantly is reforma. It covers everything from repainting a hallway to gutting an apartment back to its brickwork, and the Spanish system treats those two things very differently. Getting the category right is the first decision, because it determines your paperwork, your tax rate and your timeline.
The second surprise for most newcomers is that you are rarely renovating a house. Valencia's housing stock is overwhelmingly flats in shared buildings, which means a third party sits between you and your own walls: the comunidad de propietarios. Work that touches the facade, the roof, the risers or the structure needs their consent, and consent has legal thresholds rather than a friendly chat with the president.
Third, the trades work on a different contractual culture. There is no single national licence you can look up, quotes are structured as capitulos and partidas rather than one headline number, and the VAT rate you pay swings between ten and twenty-one percent depending on facts about you and the property that most foreign buyers have never been asked before.
None of that makes renovating here a bad idea. Buying an unmodernised flat in a good barrio and reforming it is still one of the most reliable ways to get the home you actually want in this city. It just means the planning happens before the demolition, not after.
The four things you have to get right
Each of these is a decision point where a wrong assumption costs real money. Start with whichever one is blocking you, then read the other three before you sign anything. If you are still at the purchase stage, our buying guide covers the taxes and the notary side.
Obra menor vs obra mayor
Which filing your work needs, what a declaracion responsable actually is, how long each route takes, and the four percent ICIO you pay the city on the budget.
Read the guideWhat a reforma costs per square metre
Market price bands for cosmetic, full and structural reforms in Valencia, room-by-room ranges for kitchens and bathrooms, and the ten percent IVA rule.
Read the guideFinding and vetting a builder
Where reformistas actually come from here, what a real presupuesto contains, the payment schedules the trade works to, and the red flags worth walking away from.
Read the guideGetting the comunidad to approve it
When your neighbours legally have to sign off, the voting majorities in the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, and how to keep an approval from eating a whole season.
Read the guideThe order things actually happen in
Reforms go wrong when the steps are done out of sequence, usually because demolition starts before somebody checks whether a wall is load-bearing. This is the order that avoids the expensive surprises.
Survey before you commit
Have a technician look at the flat before completion if you can. What you need to know is the structural layout, the age of the electrical and water installations, and whether there is any damp behind the plaster.
Define the scope on paper
Turn the wish list into a written scope with measurements. Everything after this point, from quotes to the permit category, depends on the scope being fixed rather than evolving.
Permit route and community consent
Establish whether you are filing a declaracion responsable or applying for a licence, and whether the comunidad needs to vote. Both can run in parallel, and both take longer than people expect.
Quotes, contract, then demolition
Compare at least three quotes on the same written scope, sign a contract with a payment schedule tied to milestones, and only then let anybody pick up a hammer.
Who this pillar is for
If you have just bought a flat that needs work, this is the sequence nobody hands you at the notary. The purchase paperwork ends the moment the keys change hands, and the reform paperwork starts the next morning under a completely different set of rules.
If you are still deciding whether to buy something unmodernised, the cost guide is the one to read first. The gap between an asking price on a done-up flat and an unmodernised one in the same street usually tells you what the market thinks the reform costs, and it is often wrong in one direction or the other.
If you are renting, most of this does not apply to you, but the community-approval page still does when a landlord's works disrupt your tenancy. Our renting guide covers the tenant side of the relationship.
Where our figures come from
Tax rates, permit categories and voting majorities on these pages come from published Spanish law and from the Ayuntamiento de Valencia's own fiscal ordinances. Where we quote a legal threshold, it is because it is written down somewhere you can check.
Cost figures are different. There is no official price index for reform work, so the ranges we publish are the bands quoted across the Valencia market, expressed as ranges rather than single numbers. Treat them as a planning envelope, not a quote, and never as a substitute for three real presupuestos on your specific flat.
Where we could not verify a number, we say so in words rather than inventing a figure. That is deliberate, and it is why some sections describe a direction of travel instead of a euro amount.
Renovating a flat you have just bought?
We help newcomers handle the Spanish-language side of a reform: reading a presupuesto properly, understanding what your comunidad is voting on, and getting the right people in the room. Start with a free fifteen-minute call and tell us what you are dealing with.
Book a free consultation