Send us your Spanish lease and we will read it line by line, check it against the LAU, and send you a clear written verdict in plain English — usually within 48 hours. Independent, and entirely on your side.
A Spanish lease is a binding legal document, usually written in Spanish, often handed to a foreign tenant with the expectation that they will sign it quickly to secure the property. By the time most renters realise a clause is unfair — a mislabelled "seasonal" term, an excessive deposit, costs that should sit with the landlord — the contract is signed and the money is gone. A rental contract review fixes that order of events: you find out what you are agreeing to before you commit, not after.
Our review is a clause-by-clause read of your specific contract by a qualified legal specialist who acts only for tenants. We do not represent the landlord or the agency, we take no commission from anyone, and we have no interest in the deal going ahead. The only outcome we care about is that you understand the contract and that it protects you. You send us the lease; we send you back a plain-English report telling you what every clause means, where it departs from your rights under the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, what to push back on, and a simple verdict: safe to sign, amend first, or do not sign.
It is the cheapest insurance available to anyone renting in Spain. The fee for a review is almost always a small fraction of a single month's rent — and a fraction of what one bad clause, an unrecoverable deposit, or a contract that quietly strips your security of tenure can cost you over the life of a tenancy.
Every contract is different, but these are the points that decide whether a Spanish lease protects you or exposes you.
The most important check of all: is this a long-term residential lease or a "seasonal" (temporada) contract? The category — not the title — decides what rights you have. We make sure it matches the fact that this is your home.
How long can you stay, and on what terms can you renew? We confirm whether you have the multi-year security the law gives long-term residential tenants, or whether the contract tries to limit you.
Is the fianza within the legal limit of one month's rent, plus only a capped additional guarantee? We flag demands for three or four months upfront and check how and where the deposit is held.
Utilities, community fees, IBI property tax, building insurance and repairs — we check the contract does not quietly shift the landlord's costs onto you.
We check the rent figure, any indexation clause, and whether increases follow the law — including the caps that apply in designated stressed areas (zonas tensionadas).
What notice must you give to leave, and what penalty applies? We confirm your legal right to withdraw after six months and flag punitive "forfeit everything" clauses.
A review is only useful if you can act on it. Ours is written to be read by a non-lawyer in a hurry, with a clear verdict at the top and the detail underneath.
Getting started takes a couple of minutes. The more context you give us, the sharper the review.
Most Spanish leases are fine. But a meaningful minority contain terms that are unfair, unenforceable, or written to remove rights the law gives you. These are the issues we most often catch for foreign tenants:
We agree a single fee upfront based on your contract — no hourly billing and no surprises. If you decide you want us to negotiate amendments with the landlord, or to act for you further during the tenancy, we will quote that separately before doing anything. You are never committed beyond the review you asked for.
A Spanish residential contract — a contrato de arrendamiento de vivienda — follows a fairly predictable structure, but the wording inside each part is where tenants get caught out. Knowing what each section should say is the difference between signing with confidence and discovering, months later, that a single line has cost you your security or your deposit. Here is how a typical lease is built, and what each part ought to contain.
The opening of every contract identifies the landlord (arrendador) and the tenant (arrendatario) by full name and NIE or DNI. This matters more than it looks. We check that the person signing as landlord is actually the registered owner, or holds written authority to let the property — because a contract signed by someone with no right to rent the property is worth nothing, and you can lose both the deposit and your home. Where a letting agency is involved, the contract should make clear whether the agency is acting as agent for the owner or simply introducing the property.
The lease should describe the dwelling precisely: the full address, and ideally the cadastral reference (referencia catastral) and Land Registry details (registro de la propiedad). A vague description is a red flag. We also check, where relevant, that the property is lawfully a residential dwelling and is not marketed or licensed only as tourist accommodation — a problem we cover in detail on our tourist licence guide, because a unit held under a tourist licence cannot always be let to you lawfully as a home.
This is the heart of the contract. A residential lease should state a clear start date and term, and crucially, how it renews. Under the LAU, a long-term residential tenant has a right to stay for up to five years (seven if the landlord is a company), through annual automatic extensions (prórrogas), regardless of the shorter term the landlord may have written in. We confirm the contract reflects that right rather than trying to contract around it.
The monthly rent should be stated as a fixed figure, with the payment date and method. Any clause allowing the landlord to raise the rent during the term must follow the law: increases are tied to an official index and are capped, with tighter limits in designated stressed areas (zonas tensionadas). We flag any clause that lets the landlord raise the rent "at will" or by an unspecified amount, because that is not enforceable.
The legal deposit (fianza) for a residential let is one month's rent, and the landlord is generally required to lodge it with the regional housing body. A landlord may ask for an additional guarantee on top, but the law caps that extra security. We check the total demanded against the legal limit and flag the common abuse of asking for three or four months upfront under various labels.
The contract should set out who pays for what: utilities, community fees (gastos de comunidad), the IBI property tax, building insurance and repairs. As a default under the law, structural and ownership costs — IBI, community fees, building insurance, major repairs — sit with the landlord, while the tenant covers their own consumption (electricity, water, gas, internet). We check the contract does not quietly reverse that.
The landlord must keep the property fit to live in and carry out repairs needed to maintain it, except for minor wear-and-tear caused by everyday use, which falls to the tenant. We flag clauses that try to dump the cost of major repairs — a failing boiler, damp, a leaking roof — onto the tenant.
The law gives a residential tenant the right to leave after the first six months, on giving at least thirty days' written notice. The contract may provide for compensation if you leave early, but that compensation is capped. We check the notice period and any penalty against what the law actually allows.
A good lease attaches an inventory and a record of the property's condition at move-in, ideally with photographs. This is your single best protection against deposit disputes later. Where there is no inventory, we tell you to create one — because without it, arguments about damage at the end of the tenancy come down to one word against another, as we explain on our deposit disputes page.
The end of most contracts is where bespoke terms appear — pets, subletting, registering your address, who may live there, what happens on the landlord's sale of the property. These are also where the most one-sided and unenforceable clauses tend to hide. We read every one of them. A clause does not become valid simply because it is printed on the page and you signed it; many terms that purport to waive your rights under the LAU are void, and we tell you which.
Not every Spanish rental is the same kind of contract, and the protections you carry depend heavily on which category you are actually in. This is the single most important distinction we draw, because it changes everything else in the review. Crucially, the category is determined by the real purpose of the let — not by the heading the landlord typed at the top of the page.
If the property is your main home, you are entitled to the full weight of the LAU. That means a right to stay for up to five years through annual extensions — seven years if the landlord is a company — a deposit capped at one month plus a limited additional guarantee, a regulated approach to rent increases, and the right to leave after six months with notice. When we review a residential contract, our job is to confirm that every one of these protections is intact and that no clause tries to contract around them. A clean residential lease is the strongest position a tenant can be in.
A genuine seasonal let — a winter stay, a fixed academic term, a defined work posting — is a different animal. It carries far fewer protections: no five-year security, more freedom for the landlord on deposit and renewal, and a much weaker position for the tenant at the end of the term. That is exactly why landlords sometimes label a year-round home as "seasonal" — it tilts the contract their way. When we see a seasonal label, the first question we ask is whether it is genuine. If the property is plainly your home, we tell you so, explain the risk, and set out how to challenge the mislabelling before you sign. Our tenant rights guide goes deeper on the consequences of the seasonal label.
Renting a single room in a shared flat sits in a greyer area of the law, and your protection depends far more heavily on what the written contract actually says. There may be no formal lodging of a deposit, shared liability for bills, and house rules that affect your day-to-day life. Because the statutory backstop is thinner here, the wording of the agreement does more of the work — which makes a careful read more important, not less. We check who you are actually contracting with, how bills and the deposit are handled, what notice applies, and whether you can register your address.
The review ends with a clear verdict, but the decision is always yours. Once you have read the report, you have three sensible routes — and we will tell you frankly which one we would take in your position.
If the contract is sound and the few points it raises are minor, you sign with confidence. This is the most common outcome, and a perfectly good one. You will know exactly what every clause means and what to expect over the life of the tenancy — and that certainty is precisely what the review is for.
Where the report flags clauses worth changing, the next step is to ask the landlord or agency to amend them. The report tells you exactly what to request and gives you the wording to use. Many tenants are surprised by how reasonable landlords are once an issue is raised clearly and politely — particularly where a clause is simply unenforceable, since the landlord gains nothing by insisting on it. If you would rather not have that conversation yourself, we can negotiate the amendments with the landlord or agency directly, as a separate optional step quoted before we begin.
Occasionally a contract is so one-sided, or the property's legal position so unsound, that the right advice is simply not to sign. That is a difficult message to hear when you have set your heart on a property and a moving date is looming — but it is far cheaper to walk away before signing than to be locked into a contract that exposes you for years. Where this is our verdict, we explain plainly why, so you can make the decision with your eyes open.
When amendments are requested, the conversation is rarely confrontational. Most changes we recommend bring the contract back into line with the law — correcting a deposit figure, removing an unenforceable rent-increase clause, restoring your right to register your address. A well-advised landlord recognises these as points they would lose anyway, and agreement is usually reached quickly. Where a landlord refuses a fair and lawful change, that refusal is itself useful information: it tells you something about how the rest of the tenancy is likely to go.
We quote a single fee before any work begins, based on your specific contract. There is no hourly billing and no surprises. The fee is almost always a small fraction of a month's rent — and far less than one bad clause or an unrecoverable deposit can cost you. Send us the contract and we will confirm the fee straight away.
Most reviews are completed and returned within 48 hours of receiving your contract. If you are signing sooner than that, tell us when you send it over and we will do our best to prioritise it. The whole process is handled by email, so you do not need to attend in person.
Whatever you have — a PDF, clear photos of each page, or a Word document. If the contract is in Spanish, that is no problem; our review is bilingual and we will explain everything back to you in plain English.
It gives you a clear verdict — safe to sign, amend first, or do not sign — followed by a clause-by-clause explanation of what each term means, where it departs from your rights under the LAU, and exactly which changes to ask the landlord for. It also answers any specific questions you raised when you sent the contract.
Yes. The review tells you what to ask for, and many tenants handle that conversation themselves. If you would rather we dealt with the landlord or agency directly to get the contract amended, we can — we will quote that as a separate, optional step before doing anything.
Both. A review is most valuable before you sign, when changes are still possible. But if you have already signed and want to understand your position — or a problem has arisen — we can review the contract and advise on your rights and options under it.
Yes. On rental matters we act only for tenants. We do not represent landlords or letting agencies and we take no commission from anyone, so our advice is entirely on your side. See our full tenant legal services.
Yes. Spanish tenancy law is national, so we review contracts and act for tenants across every region — the Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca, Costa Cálida, Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, the Balearics and the Canaries. The whole service is remote, so your location is never an obstacle.
Then you sign with confidence — which is a perfectly good outcome and exactly what the review is for. You are paying for certainty, not for problems to be invented. Many contracts pass with only minor points to clarify, and knowing that before you commit is worth the fee on its own.
Yes, and often more so. A "standard" template is not a neutral document; it is usually drafted to protect the party who commissioned it, then reused across many properties without anyone checking it from the tenant's side. Standard contracts routinely carry clauses that are out of date, unenforceable, or quietly weighted towards the landlord — an old deposit figure, an unlawful rent-increase clause, or a "seasonal" label on a long-term home. A review confirms whether yours genuinely protects you.
It can be. A genuine seasonal let — a winter stay, a fixed academic term, a defined work posting — is legitimate but carries far fewer protections than a residential lease, with no five-year security and a much weaker position at the end of the term. The danger is a year-round home being labelled "seasonal" to tilt the contract towards the landlord. The category is decided by the real use of the property, not the heading. If the property is plainly your home, we flag the mislabelling and explain how to challenge it before you sign.
No. Some contracts include a clause forbidding the tenant from registering their address (empadronamiento) at the property, but a landlord cannot lawfully use the lease to block it. Your padrón registration underpins healthcare, residency and visa matters, so this is one of the clauses we look for specifically and flag for removal. If you have already signed a contract containing one, we can advise on your position.
Send us your rental contract and we will tell you, in plain English, whether it is safe to sign — quoted upfront, typically back within 48 hours.
The information on this page is general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. Spanish tenancy law (the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos) and regional housing rules vary by autonomous community and change over time; deposit limits, minimum terms, rent-increase caps, and stressed-area (zona tensionada) designations are subject to change. A contract review provides advice on your specific lease and circumstances. Platinum Legal Spain is an independent English-speaking legal practice acting for tenants across Spain.