Holiday letting on Mallorca and the ETV licence

This is the question we are asked most often by British and Irish buyers, and it is the one where the answer most often disappoints. It is worth understanding before you fall in love with a house, not after.

What the ETV is

ETV stands for Estancia Turística en Vivienda — tourist accommodation in a residential property. Anyone letting short-term to holidaymakers on Mallorca needs one. Without it, tourist letting is not permitted, and the Balearic authorities enforce this with substantial fines.

The three properties of the system that decide everything

First: the licence attaches to the property, not to the owner. It is granted for one specific dwelling. When the owner sells, it passes with the property — which makes it a value factor in its own right. It also means that a neighbour’s licence tells you nothing whatsoever about the house you are looking at.

Second: the number is capped. The Balearics operate a quota of letting places. New authorisations are possible only where capacity exists — and that quota has been suspended and revised by successive administrations. In a capped system, demand does not create supply.

Third: not every zone qualifies. Municipalities and the island council designate where tourist letting is permitted at all. In parts of Palma and in certain residential areas it is restricted or excluded outright. On top of that, a community of owners can prohibit tourist letting in its building — a decision that stands regardless of any official authorisation.

What that means in practice

You cannot buy a house without a licence and then obtain one. That is the sentence most buyers need to hear, and it is the opposite of how licensing works in most countries.

At the time of writing, no new ETV licences are being issued on Mallorca. Whether that changes is a political decision, not an administrative one, and we do not know when or in which direction it will move. Planning a purchase on the assumption that it will change is speculation, not a plan.

If letting income is part of your case for buying, then the licence is not a detail to sort out later. It is a purchase criterion, ranking alongside location and price.

What to check before buying

Ask for the registration number, not a verbal assurance. A licence has an official reference and appears in the tourism register. “The current owners rent it out every summer” is not evidence of anything except that they do it.

Check what the licence actually covers. Authorisations specify a number of places. A licence for six does not become a licence for ten because the house sleeps ten.

Check the community rules where the property is part of a development. A valid ETV does not override a resolution of the owners’ community.

The connection with undeclared building work

These two problems arrive together more often than you would expect. A property with an extension that was never registered, or a pool that never appeared in the building consent, can find its licence position complicated — and the same paperwork gap that blocks one tends to surface in the other.

If a survey turns up undeclared work, treat the licence question as open until proven otherwise.

Long-term letting is a different matter

Renting to a resident tenant on a long-term contract is governed by ordinary Spanish tenancy law, not by tourism law, and does not require an ETV. The distinction is the length and purpose of the stay, not the fact that money changes hands.

Buyers occasionally conclude from this that a series of one-month lets is a workaround. It is not, and it is exactly the pattern inspectors look for.

Why there are no numbers on this page

We do not print quota figures, fine levels or place counts in the text. All three are set by regional policy and have changed more than once in recent years. A number written today would be wrong at some point without the reader being able to tell. The mechanics above are stable; the figures are not, and they need checking against the current regulation at the time you buy.

What we do

For every property we handle, the licence status is stated in the key facts — including when there is none. A property without a licence is not a lesser property; it is a different proposition, and it should be priced and presented as one.