ITE and Building Evaluation Report in Spain: what the law requires of the community

Art. 29.1 of the texto refundido de la Ley de Suelo y Rehabilitación Urbana (Spain's consolidated Land and Urban Renewal Act) says that owners of property in multi-unit residential buildings “may be required by the competent authority” to prove its condition, “at least as regards the building's state of repair and compliance with the regulations in force on universal accessibility, as well as its level of energy efficiency”. Sections 2 to 6 of the article were declared unconstitutional and void by Constitutional Court Judgment 143/2017.

These are examples with their regulation. The specific obligation for your building depends on your municipality and may have changed: confirm with the town hall or check your province in our list of provinces.

• Comunitat Valenciana

  The TRLOTUP requires owners of residential buildings more than fifty years old to arrange a technical inspection at least every ten years (Decreto Legislativo 1/2021, art. 189.2). It is done with the building evaluation report (informe de evaluación del edificio), which must be entered in the regional register (art. 189.4).

• Catalonia

  Decreto 67/2015 provides that residential buildings undergo a technical inspection before they are 45 years old (annex 1), and the certificate of fitness is valid for ten years in buildings with no defects or only minor defects (art. 14).

• Madrid

  The 2011 municipal ordinance sets the obligation every ten years, with the first inspection after thirty years, and the City Council also refers to the building evaluation report (IEE) for residential buildings more than fifty years old. The municipal website lets you look up by address the year it is due.

• Seville

  The municipal ordinance requires the first report in the year after the building turns 20 and its renewal every ten years (art. 5.3). The Andalusian regulation sets 50 years and a minimum default frequency of ten years, unless another ordinance applies (Decreto 550/2022, art. 323).

• Zaragoza

  The municipal website states the ITE is mandatory and periodic for buildings over 50 years old, every 10 years. Aragon's planning law (art. 260.1) sets fifteen years for buildings over fifty years old in municipalities of more than 25,000 inhabitants: confirm the schedule with the town hall.

In these examples it falls to the owners and, in a building under horizontal property, to the community. Works that do not require a prior agreement of the owners' meeting include those arising from “the imposition, by the authorities, of the legal duty of upkeep” (art. 10.1.a of the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, Spain's Horizontal Property Act), and the owners pay for them (art. 10.2.a).

Several regional regulations require the report to apply for renovation grants, for example the Andalusian Decreto 550/2022 (art. 324.3) and the Valencian TRLOTUP (art. 189.5).