When you buy off-plan in Spain you do not pay once — you pay in stages as the building goes up. This is how the payment schedule is built, why every pre-completion payment must be guaranteed, and what to check on the schedule before you sign your name to it.
Buying a finished resale home is simple in its timing: you agree a price, you pay it at the notary, and you walk away with the keys. Buying off-plan — a property that is still being built, or has not yet been started — works the other way around. You commit to the price now, but you hand over the money in instalments spread across the construction period, with the final and largest payment due only when the building is finished and ready to be signed over to you. Those instalments are the off-plan stage payments, and the document that sets them out is the payment schedule.
The logic is straightforward from the developer's side. Construction takes money, and a developer would rather build using buyers' staged deposits than fund the whole project on its own borrowing. From your side as the buyer, the appeal is that you secure a property at today's price, often at a pre-launch discount, and spread the cost over the months or years it takes to build. The catch is that you are handing over real money for something that does not yet physically exist — and that is precisely why Spanish law surrounds these payments with protection, and why the structure of the schedule matters so much. For the wider picture of how an off-plan purchase fits together, see our guide to the off-plan property purchase process.
Schedules vary between developers and projects, but almost all follow the same four-part shape from first contact to keys.
A small sum — often a few thousand euros — paid to take the unit off the market while contracts are prepared. It is the first money to leave your account and the first that should be accounted for in the schedule. It is usually credited against the later payments, but you must know exactly what taking it off you commits each side to.
When you sign the private purchase contract (the contrato de compraventa), you pay a larger deposit. Together with the staged payments that follow, this commonly totals 20–40% of the price across the build. This is the contract that fixes the schedule, the guarantees and the completion terms, and it is the document that most deserves careful legal review before signing.
Through the construction period you make further payments at agreed points — sometimes monthly, more often tied to milestones such as foundations, structure complete, or roof on. These spread the bulk of the price across the build and are the payments most exposed to risk if the project stalls, which is why how they are triggered matters.
The largest single payment — often the remaining 60–80% — falls due at completion, when the property is finished, the licence of first occupation is in place and you sign the escritura before the notary. For most buyers this final payment is funded by a Spanish mortgage drawn down on completion day.
The exact split is a commercial matter that varies from project to project, and there is no single "standard" schedule fixed in law. What does not vary is the principle: the money you pay before completion is at risk in a way the completion payment is not, because by completion you are exchanging your money for a finished, registered property. Everything paid before that point is paid against a promise — which is exactly why the law requires those earlier payments to be guaranteed.
This is the single most important rule of off-plan buying in Spain, and the one foreign buyers most often do not realise applies to them. Every amount you pay to a developer before the property is finished and handed over — the reservation, the contract deposit and each interim stage payment — must by law be covered by a guarantee or insurance policy. If the developer fails to deliver the property, goes bust, or cannot obtain the licence that allows the building to be lived in, that guarantee is what entitles you to your money back, with interest.
The protection exists because Spain learned the hard way. After the building boom and the crash that followed, thousands of off-plan buyers — many of them foreign — lost deposits on developments that were never finished or never licensed. The current rules require developers to ring-fence buyers' money in a special account and to back each payment with either a bank guarantee or an insurance policy. We cover the law and the documents in detail on two dedicated pages: how the protection works is set out in our guide to off-plan deposit protection, and the most common form of guarantee — the bank guarantee — is explained in full in our guide to the bank guarantee (aval bancario). The essential point for the schedule itself is this: a payment without a corresponding guarantee is an unprotected payment, and no stage payment on your schedule should ever be unprotected.
One of the most consequential details in any off-plan schedule is what actually triggers each interim payment. There are two broad approaches, and the difference between them decides how much of your risk sits with you and how much sits with the developer. A purely date-driven schedule says you pay a set amount on fixed calendar dates regardless of how far the building has progressed. A progress-driven schedule ties each payment to a verifiable construction milestone — money changes hands when the foundations are certified complete, when the structure tops out, when the roof is on — so you are paying for work that has demonstrably been done.
From the buyer's point of view, payments linked to verifiable progress are far safer. If a payment is due simply because a date has arrived, you can find yourself handing over a large sum for a development that has barely moved, deepening your exposure if the project later stalls. If the same payment is instead due on a certified milestone, a slow or stalled build naturally slows the demands on your money, and a clear failure to reach the milestone gives you grounds to question the payment. In practice many Spanish schedules are a mix — some dates, some milestones — and the work is in reading which payments depend on what, insisting on objective triggers where it matters, and making sure that "milestone reached" means a verifiable, certified event rather than the developer's say-so. If the build does fall behind, the consequences are governed by the delay provisions of the contract, which we examine separately in our guide to off-plan delays.
An off-plan purchase from a developer is a new-build sale, and new builds in Spain are subject to VAT — Impuesto sobre el Valor Añadido, or IVA — rather than the Transfer Tax that applies to resale homes. The important point for the schedule is that this VAT is not paid in one lump at the end. It is charged on each stage payment as that payment is made. When you pay your contract deposit, you pay VAT on the deposit; when you pay an interim instalment, you pay VAT on that instalment; and so on through to the completion balance.
For residential off-plan property the standard VAT rate is normally charged at the reduced rate that applies to homes, with a separate Stamp Duty (AJD) also payable, usually at completion. Garages and storerooms bought with the home, and any commercial element, can carry different rates. The practical consequence for budgeting is that the cash you need at each stage is the stage payment plus the VAT on it — not just the headline instalment. A schedule that quotes net figures without making the VAT explicit can leave a buyer short at exactly the moment a payment is due. We make sure the VAT treatment of every stage is clear before you sign, so the real cash requirement at each milestone is known in advance.
Most off-plan buyers paying from outside the eurozone face a problem that has nothing to do with Spanish law and everything to do with the calendar: a payment schedule fixes amounts in euros on dates that may be months or years away, while your money sits in pounds, dollars or another currency. Between signing the contract and paying the completion balance, the exchange rate can move significantly, and a schedule that looked affordable when you signed can cost noticeably more — or less — in your home currency by the time each stage falls due.
This is a planning issue rather than a legal one, but it belongs in any sensible read of the schedule. Knowing the euro amount and the approximate date of each stage payment in advance lets you decide how to manage the currency exposure — whether to convert in advance, to use a forward contract through a currency specialist, or to time transfers deliberately rather than scrambling for euros the week a payment is due. Allowing time for international transfers to clear into a Spanish account also avoids a payment being technically late through nothing more than banking delay. We set out the euro amounts and dates clearly so you can plan the currency side properly, even though the foreign-exchange decision itself remains yours.
Construction rarely runs exactly to plan, and the off-plan schedule has to anticipate that. A delay can cut two ways depending on how the schedule is built. Where interim payments are tied to certified milestones, a delayed build naturally delays the payments — you are not asked for the next instalment until the work it is linked to is actually done, which keeps your exposure aligned with progress. Where payments are tied to fixed calendar dates, a delay can leave you having paid for stages that have not been reached, with your money sitting in a stalled project.
The more important question is what the contract entitles you to when the completion date itself slips. A well-drafted off-plan contract gives the buyer real remedies for late delivery — interest on the sums already paid, the right to require completion within a further period, and ultimately the right to terminate and recover everything paid, drawing on the guarantees, if the developer cannot deliver. Because those payments were guaranteed at the time they were made, a buyer who has to walk away from a failed project is entitled to claim the money back rather than lose it. The detail of delay rights, time limits and how to enforce them is significant enough that we treat it separately in our guide to off-plan delays; for the purposes of the schedule, the point is to make sure those remedies are written in before you sign, not discovered to be missing once a delay has already happened.
An off-plan payment schedule is deceptively simple on the surface — a list of amounts and dates — and genuinely consequential underneath. Each line commits real money to a property that does not yet exist, and the difference between a schedule that protects you and one that exposes you lies in details that are easy to skim past: what triggers each payment, whether each stage is guaranteed, how VAT is applied, and what you can do if the build runs late. For a foreign buyer who is not reading the contract in their first language, the risk is rarely that the schedule is impossible to follow. It is that the points that matter most are the ones a busy buyer is least likely to question.
Our role is to read the schedule the way the developer's lawyer wrote it — with full attention to what each clause does and does not do for you. We review the whole payment structure against the private contract, check that every pre-completion payment is matched by a valid guarantee before it is made, press for interim payments to be tied to verifiable construction milestones rather than dates alone, confirm the VAT treatment at each stage so your cash planning is accurate, and make sure the delay remedies and completion conditions are written in before you commit. Where the schedule needs improving, we negotiate it; this work runs alongside the wider developer contract review and our full Spanish property legal services. With extensive experience helping expats buy in Spain, we act for English-speaking clients across the country, explain everything in plain English, and quote clearly for the work involved. Extras may apply depending on the complexity of the development and your contract.
They are instalments you pay to a developer during the construction of a property that is not yet finished. Instead of paying once, you pay a reservation deposit, a deposit on signing the private contract, staged interim payments through the build, and the balance at completion. Every payment made before completion must by law be backed by a bank guarantee or insurance policy.
Most follow the same shape: a small reservation deposit, a larger deposit on signing the private contract, one or more interim payments during construction, and the balance at completion. The pre-completion payments commonly total around 20–40% of the price across the build, with the remaining balance — often 60–80% — paid at completion, frequently funded by a mortgage. The exact split varies by developer and project.
Yes. Every payment you make before the property is finished and handed over — the reservation, the contract deposit and each interim stage — must be covered by a bank guarantee or insurance policy. If the developer fails to deliver or cannot obtain the occupation licence, that guarantee entitles you to your money back with interest. A stage payment with no matching guarantee is unprotected and should not be made.
Payments tied to verifiable construction milestones — foundations complete, structure up, roof on — are safer for the buyer than payments due simply on fixed calendar dates. Progress-linked payments keep your money aligned with the work actually done, so a slow or stalled build naturally slows the demands on you. Many Spanish schedules mix the two, so it is important to read which payments depend on what.
Yes. An off-plan purchase from a developer is a new-build sale subject to VAT (IVA), and the VAT is charged on each stage payment as it is made rather than in one lump at the end. There is also Stamp Duty (AJD), usually payable at completion. The practical effect is that the cash you need at each stage is the instalment plus the VAT on it, so you should confirm whether the schedule's figures include or exclude VAT.
Check the total and how it splits between pre-completion and completion payments, what triggers each instalment (date or certified milestone), that every pre-completion payment has a matching guarantee in your hands before the money moves, what happens if delivery is late, the conditions that must be met before the final balance is due, and how VAT is applied to each stage so your cash planning is accurate.
If payments are tied to certified milestones, a delay naturally delays the payments and keeps your exposure aligned with progress. If they are tied to fixed dates, you can end up having paid for stages that have not been reached. A well-drafted contract gives you remedies for late delivery — interest, an extension, or the right to terminate and reclaim your payments through the guarantees — which is why those terms must be in the contract before you sign.
The schedule fixes euro amounts on future dates, while your money may be in another currency, so exchange-rate movement between signing and each payment can change the real cost. Knowing the amounts and dates in advance lets you plan the currency side — converting ahead, using a forward contract, or timing transfers — and allow time for international transfers to clear so a payment is not late through banking delay alone.
The balance falls due at completion once the building is finished, the licence of first occupation is issued and the property can be signed over before the notary. For most buyers it is funded by a Spanish mortgage drawn down on completion day, when the bank releases the funds at the notary in exchange for its charge over the finished property. The mortgage, licence and notary appointment all have to align with the completion date.
Yes. We review the whole payment structure against the private contract, check that each pre-completion payment is matched by a valid guarantee before it is made, press for milestone-linked triggers, confirm the VAT treatment at each stage, and make sure the delay remedies and completion conditions are in place. Where the schedule needs improving we negotiate it. We act for English-speaking clients across Spain and quote clearly for the work involved.
The payment schedule decides how and when your money leaves your account — and whether each stage is protected. We review it, check the guarantees, and negotiate where it matters. In plain English, across Spain.
The information on this page is general guidance only and does not constitute legal or tax advice. Off-plan payment structures, the guarantee and deposit-protection rules, and the VAT and Stamp Duty treatment of new-build property are set out in legislation that changes over time and can vary with the development and the autonomous community. Always obtain advice on your specific contract and circumstances before signing or making any payment. Platinum Legal Spain is an independent English-speaking legal practice serving clients across Spain.