Andalusia Is Cutting the Purchase Tax. Should You Wait to Buy? (November 2026)

The cut was announced on 24 September 2026 by the Junta's vice-president and finance minister in the Andalusian Parliament, and on 30 October the regional government approved the 2027 budget that contains it. One honest caveat before you plan around it: a budget approved by the government is not yet a law passed by parliament. Passage is widely expected, but until the budget is approved and published, the current rates apply and nothing is guaranteed.

The mechanics, assuming it passes: the general ITP rate on resale property falls from 7% to 6.75% for purchases completed from 1 January 2027. What counts is the completion date at the notary, not when you offered or reserved. New build is untouched; that route pays IVA at 10% plus stamp duty, as our full cost guide explains.

A quarter of a percentage point sounds small because it is. The table below is the entire financial case for waiting.

Real money, worth collecting if it arrives on its own. The question is what it costs to chase it.

Here is the calculation nobody makes when "wait until January" first sounds clever. Marbella's average asking price stood at €5,974/m² in October 2026, up 3.1% on a year earlier (Idealista). At that recent annual asking-price growth, the equivalent movement on a €1 million property would be around €31,000 over a year. That puts a €2,500 one-off tax saving into perspective, although individual properties and sub-markets can move very differently.

The tax saving on that same €1,000,000 purchase is €2,500. Once. Waiting purely for the tax reduction therefore means trading a certain 0.25% saving against an uncertain movement in the price of the property you actually want.

The necessary honesty in the other direction: asking prices are not sale prices, past pace is not a promise, and some zones are currently flat or easing, as our price ladder shows zone by zone. If the market paused for a year, the waiting buyer would collect the €2,500 and lose nothing. But that is the bet you are making, named honestly: a certain €2,500 against an uncertain market, in a municipality that has just set another all-time high. And it ignores the largest number of all: on any specific home, the quality of your negotiation and your preparation moves the price by far more than either the tax cut or a few months of market drift. The buyers who win here are the prepared ones, not the ones timing quarter-points.

There is one group for whom this is genuinely relevant: buyers whose purchase is already completing around the turn of the year. If your process naturally lands in late December, it is entirely legitimate to ask your lawyer whether completing in early January instead makes sense; that is a conversation about weeks, not a strategy of waiting, and the answer depends on the contract, the seller and the certainty that the budget has actually passed by then.

The €200,000 threshold change matters mostly below Marbella price levels, but it is worth knowing: the reduced rates that rarely applied here become available on slightly more properties across Andalusia. And if you are buying new build, none of this concerns your taxes at all.

Step back from the quarter-point and the direction of travel is the real story. Andalusia simplified its transfer tax to a flat 7% in 2021, has kept purchase taxation stable since, and is now lowering it while also easing inheritance and donation taxation in the same budget. Whatever one thinks of any single measure, Andalusia has repeatedly used lower property and inheritance taxation as part of its fiscal policy since 2019, in visible contrast to the national debate, where the loudest recent proposal ran in exactly the opposite direction.

For international buyers weighing this coast against other European destinations, that consistency is worth more than the €2,500: a fiscal direction you can plan around is a feature of a market, and this one keeps getting marginally friendlier rather than marginally harsher.

If you are weighing timing, we will put the real numbers on the table for your specific situation: the tax arithmetic with your lawyer, what your target zone did over the past year rather than what the municipal average suggests, and what actually moves your outcome, which is almost always the home and the negotiation, not the calendar. Contact us and start with the arithmetic.