Becoming an Expat in Spain: Volume 15

How to remove a mortgage charge from the Land Registry in Spain

Spanish mortgages are not automatically cancelled when they are paid off.

Not having removed a charge against a property from the Escritura (Spanish Land Registry) will prevent it from being sold and similarly no purchaser will ever be able to obtain a mortgage on a property that already has a charge registered against it.

A beneficiary similarly cannot inherit a property upon the death of the owner if this charge has not been removed.

As such, a solicitor will need to be appointed to deal with the removal of the charge.

This is an extremely involved process and will not be able to be completed by a non-legal individual.

Your solicitor will need you to grant them Power of Attorney to act for you.

They will then reach out to the lender who needs to agree to the charge being removed.

Your solicitor will then choose a notary for the lender’s representative to attend.

Both parties will then sign several relevant legal documents fully discharging the mortgage and those legal documents must then be formally ‘’lodged’’ accordingly.

Typically, 2-3 months later then, the property will appear on the Escritura as ‘’clean’’ which means it is then free of all financial encumbrances.

The reason lenders leave mortgage charges against properties indefinitely on the Escritura is because it improves their lending ratio reports, however many banks merge with others and all too frequently, years after a mortgage has been paid off, the successor bank is unable to find the original documents which of course causes immense issues and, in most cases, means that potential buyers pull out. Getting charges removed as soon as possible after clearing off a mortgage is therefore really essential.

In terms of cost, you should expect to be paying between 1300€ to 1500€ in total including iva and all solicitors and notary fees to execute this process from start to finish.