The Spanish cadastral value: what it is, where to find it and which taxes use it

What it is, in one sentence

The cadastral value (valor catastral) is the administrative value Spain's Directorate General of the Cadastre assigns to every property. Article 22 of the consolidated Cadastral Law defines it as the value "determined objectively for each property from the data held in the Cadastre", made up of a land cadastral value plus a building cadastral value¹.

Neither the owner nor the market sets it: it comes from the registered data (floor area, use, age, location) applied to the ponencia de valores each municipality approves. It matters because it is the base of several taxes you pay every year, starting with the IBI.

Its two components: land and building

The cadastral value is not one figure. It is two, listed separately:

• Land cadastral value, the share attributable to the ground.
• Building cadastral value, the share attributable to what is built on it.

Their sum is the total. In a flat, the land value is the proportional share of the plot that corresponds to your home under its participation coefficient.

That split is not an accounting detail. It decides at least three different things: municipal capital gains tax is computed on the land value alone, personal income tax on a second home is computed on the total, and a landlord's deductible depreciation is computed with the land stripped out. All three appear below with their article. If you are estimating capital gains, take the land figure from your IBI bill and use it in the municipal capital gains calculator.

How the figure is manufactured, and why it is not "half of market"

Almost every page on this subject sums the cadastral value up as "roughly half the market value". The half comes from a real coefficient, but the sentence stops halfway, because that coefficient is not applied to what the reader assumes and it is not applied the same way to every property.

Article 23.2 of the consolidated law forbids the cadastral value from exceeding market value and orders a market-reference coefficient to be fixed by order of the Minister of Finance for properties of the same class¹. That order is the Order of 14 October 1998, and its section Segundo.2 sets out the whole chain²:

"a market-relation coefficient (RM) of 0.5 shall be applied to the individualised value resulting from the ponencia de valores. That individualised value shall be obtained by adding the plot's land value and the building's replacement value, both corrected (...) and applying to the result (...) only in the case of built properties, the 1.40 coefficient for promotion costs and profits."

Read the order of operations twice, because that is what matters. The 0.5 is not applied to market value: it is applied to the individualised value coming out of the ponencia, and that individualised value already carries a 1.40 when something is built on the plot. The result:

On the same corrected base, a home comes out at seven tenths and a plot at half. The rule everyone repeats describes the second case, not the first.

And there is a condition almost nobody mentions: section Segundo.3 of the same Order requires, for the 0.5 RM to apply at all, that the ponencia cover all the municipality's urban property and that it have been approved after 27 January 1993². In a town whose total ponencia predates that date, this section's coefficient does not engage.

One last piece of context on the age of the scaffolding: section Primero of the same Order fixed the value module M for 1999 at 110,000 pesetas per square metre (about €661.11), and its first final provision keeps it in force "so long as no significant variations occur in market values" that would justify approving a new one². The BOE's own analysis record for that Order lists no later order replacing it.

The ponencia de valores: who decides your figure, and how often

The question that follows "why is my cadastral value this number?" is almost never answered, and yet the law answers it.

Your property's individual figure is produced by applying the municipality's ponencia de valores (article 24.1)¹. The ponencia holds the criteria, valuation modules and town planning needed to determine the cadastral value, and is aligned with the value-coordination guidelines (article 25.1). It can be total (every property of a class), partial (some zones, blocks or plots) or special (properties of special characteristics), under article 26.2¹.

Who writes it and how it surfaces, from article 27¹:

• It is drawn up by the Directorate General of the Cadastre, not by the council, though total and partial ponencias first go to the interested council for a report.
• Approval decisions are published by edict in the Cadastre's electronic office, which is also where the Cadastre publishes the state of ponencias by municipality⁷.
• And there is a deadline: before 1 July of the year they are adopted if total, and before 1 October if partial or special.

The gap between one revision and the next is in the law too, and it is the fact that explains why your cadastral value may have sat still for two decades. Article 28.3.a) says a general collective valuation procedure "may only be started once at least five years have elapsed" since the previous values took effect and "shall in any event be carried out from 10 years after that date"¹. A five-year floor and a ten-year mandate.

When the revision does arrive, the new values do not apply in the same year: article 29.5 gives them effect on 1 January of the year following their notification¹.

How often it changes: the two updating routes

Between one ponencia and the next, the cadastral value moves through coefficients, and article 32 opens two routes that exclude each other¹.

Route 1 (article 32.1). The State budget laws update the values by coefficients, which may differ by group of municipalities or by class of property. This is the automatic route, and the one that explains why your bill rises when nobody has revised your street.

Route 2 (article 32.2), and this is the surprising one: the council asks for it. A municipality can request that the urban cadastral values in its territory be updated, which is to say it can ask for its own residents' taxable base to rise. Three cumulative conditions and a strict calendar:

1. That at least five years have passed since the values from the last general collective valuation took effect.
2. That substantial differences have emerged between market values and the ones used as a base, affecting the whole municipality homogeneously.
3. That the request reach the Cadastre before 31 May of the year before the one the coefficients are sought for.

The Ministry judges whether the conditions are met and publishes in the BOE, before 30 September each year, the list of specific municipalities where the coefficients will apply. And the closing paragraph completes the circle: applying route 2 excludes route 1's coefficients.

So if you want to know whether your cadastral value will move next year, the document to watch is not the budget law but that September ministerial order, and whether your town is on the list.

Where to find it, and why they ask you to identify yourself

Three places, quickest first:

1. The IBI bill, which breaks it into land and building. Fastest, and the one you need for capital gains.
2. The Catastro's electronic office. With a digital certificate or Cl@ve you can see all your properties' data³.
3. The purchase deed, which often records the cadastral value in force at the time.

The identification is not administrative fussiness. Article 51 of the consolidated law lists the Cadastre's protected data and the cadastral value is on that list by name, together with the land and building values of each individual property¹. That is why you can look up any plot's floor area or use from its cadastral reference without identifying yourself, and cannot look up what the Cadastre thinks your neighbour's house is worth.

Cadastral value, reference value and market value

Three different figures, and confusing them costs money:

The reference value is the newest of the three and causes the most confusion: it has existed since 2022, is derived from actual notarised sale prices, and does not change the cadastral value. If you buy or inherit a property, the reference value sets the minimum base you are taxed on, even if you paid less.

The two coefficients sit in two different orders, and that is the whole distance between the figures: the cadastral value carries the 1998 Order's RM of 0.5, and the reference value carries a reduction factor of 0.9. Nine tenths against a half, on different magnitudes.

And a warning about the ruling you may have read. In February 2026 the Constitutional Court dismissed the challenge brought against the reference-value regime⁴. That judgment is about the reference value, not the cadastral value: the provisions examined are those of the transfer tax law and the third final provision of the consolidated Cadastral Law. It says nothing about how the cadastral value is determined or about ponencias de valores.

Which taxes depend on it

IBI. It is directly the taxable base: the council applies its rate to the cadastral value. Where the town has run a general collective valuation, the taxable base also carries a reduction that runs out over nine years, which is why the bill climbs with the rate and the value both frozen. It is modelled in the IBI calculator.

Municipal capital gains tax. The land portion only, and only in the objective calculation method.

Building tax (ICIO). It does not depend on the cadastral value, and that is worth saying here because the works that raise that value are the same works that trigger this tax. The Spanish building tax is charged on the material execution cost of the works and not on the property, so declaring building work has two separate consequences: a one-off tax on what it costs to build, and a cadastral alteration that raises the property tax in every year that follows.

Personal income tax, deemed rental income. Article 85.1 of the Personal Income Tax Act imputes 2% of the cadastral value as income, or 1.1% where the town's values have been revised through a general collective valuation that took effect "in the tax year or in the ten tax years before it"⁵. That window slides with the year, so the 1.1% expires.

The same article carries a third case that almost no page reports and that is exactly the one a recent buyer needs: if at the accrual date the property has no cadastral value, or it has not been notified to the owner, the rate is 1.1% applied to 50% of the greater of the value checked by the administration for other taxes and the acquisition price or value⁵. Not having the figure does not exempt you: the law substitutes one. A main home, unbuilt land and properties under construction are outside the imputation. The same rule decides what a non-resident owner pays, declared on form 210 instead of in personal income tax.

Personal income tax on letting: here the land/building split is what decides. Article 14.2.a) of the Personal Income Tax Regulation allows an annual deduction of up to 3% of the greater of two magnitudes, the acquisition cost paid or the cadastral value, "excluding the land from the computation". And its second paragraph resolves the normal case, which is not knowing how much of what you paid was land: "Where the land value is not known, it shall be calculated by apportioning the acquisition cost paid between the land and building cadastral values for each year"⁶. In other words, the land/building split of your cadastral value is the ratio that decides how much of your purchase price you may depreciate.

A worked example with real numbers

A flat whose ponencia gives a plot land value of €60,000 and a corrected building replacement value of €90,000. The corrected sum is €150,000.

The cadastral value is €105,000, that is 0.70 of the corrected base. The same plot with nothing on it, at its corrected land value of €60,000, gets no 1.40 and comes out at €30,000.

What that figure costs per year, assuming a split of €42,000 land and €63,000 building:

• IBI at a 0.66% rate: €693.00.
• Deemed income if it is a second home: €1,155.00 of income at 1.1%, or €2,100.00 at 2% if the town's ten-year window has closed. Same house, nearly double the declared income, and the only thing that changed is the age of the ponencia.
• Depreciation if you let it and bought it for €240,000: the greater of the two magnitudes is the acquisition cost, whose land share is unknown, so it is apportioned with the cadastral split (63,000 / 105,000 = 0.60). Depreciable base €144,000 and an annual deduction of €4,320.00. Through the cadastral branch it would have been €63,000 x 3% = €1,890.00.

If you think your cadastral value is wrong

This is where you want the calendar in front of you, because the deadline is short and the law states it somewhere non-obvious.

One month, not four. Article 29.7 sets one month to file the recurso de reposición or the economic-administrative claim against the notification of values, and defines which day it runs from depending on how you were notified¹.

Appealing suspends nothing. Article 27.4 for the ponencia and article 29.6 for your individual value say the same thing: filing the claim does not suspend the enforceability of the act¹. You pay while you argue.

And the notification can be deemed made without your reading anything. Where you cannot be reached for reasons not attributable to the administration, article 29.4.b) allows a notice in the BOE listing the owners pending notification, and you must appear within ten days from the day after that publication; once they pass, "the notification shall be deemed to have been made for all legal purposes"¹. For legal persons the electronic appearance is compulsory and the act sits in the electronic office during November of the year the ponencia was approved (article 29.2).

Besides the appeal, and on a different calendar, you can ask the Cadastre to correct discrepancies where the physical data does not match reality (floor area, use, age). A cadastral value that is too high is not only a bigger IBI bill: it carries into capital gains tax, into deemed income and, if you let the property, into your depreciation.

This information is educational and is not tax advice. For a specific case, consult the Directorate General of the Cadastre, your local council, or a tax adviser.