We are thinking of retiring to Santa Pola

Firstly, it would depend on the passport you hold. If you are from UK and wish to retire you would need a non lucrative visa which you apply for in a Spanish consulate in UK. There are very many posts on here either under residency or the help forums.

If an EU passport it is very much easier and you can come to Spain and apply when here.

A brief recap is that, as a UK citizen, you would need an income of 28,800 euro per year for the first applicant and 7200 for the subsequent family applicants either married or children under 18. You can show sufficient savings to give you that income over the first year at least and then sufficient savings to give you that income over the next 2 years and the 2 years subsequent to that.

Property would depend what you are looking for. Santa Pola is not the most expensive of places unless you are looking for a front line beach property. You can get an idea by looking on Rightmove or Idealista or Kyero or similar. This will give you some sort of baseline to look for.

You will also need medical care which is either private medical insurance or, if you are receiving a UK pension, healthcare provided on an S1 form which transfers your medical care to Spain and is a type of UK government paid for insurance. You would also be time limited in leaving Spain during the first 5 years as at no more than 6 months in any one year and no more than a total of 10 months in the first 5 years. After that you would be classed as a permanent resident and the absences are not as strict.

If simply looking for a holiday home then no visa is required but you would be restricted to 90 days visit in a rolling 180 days period.

 EU (including Ireland) the financial requirement is just 7500 in savings and an income of 600 euro a month per person plus healthcare.

Best of luck and there really are very, very many similar topics on here for you to look around and see the requirements.

Thanks Marcliff, we are both UK nationals, as we are in Santa Pola on holiday we visited a couple of Estate agents we are on their email list, we also found out that any property sale is subject to 10% tax which we don’t know about! For us the visa criteria is an issue, we don’t want to sell our home in the UK, we would rent it to generate an income, I have a private pension, however this is still short of the minimum income to get a visa, with our savings we would just qualify, but once we buy a property our savings are almost spent so we no longer qualify for the visa financially, it’s frustrating to say the least.

You would need to add 13 to  14 percent on the top of any house purchase for taxes and fees. Transfer tax 10%, then the notary fees, solicitor fees, utility connection and so on.

Also remember that if you sell your property in UK after you become a fiscal resident in Spain it is no longer classed as your primary residence and will be subject to Capital Gains Tax which could be quite high if you have had the property for some time considering the price rises in UK.

Yes, lots to think about and plan for but we have lived here now over 14 years and it has all been worth it although it was a lot easier then.

Thanks Marcliff, sadly we won’t be able buy, one think that I was thinking about was, it might seem an unusual suggestion do you or anyone know if there is any demand for House sitting in Spain while the owners are away?

Many thanks

Malcolm