The 3/5 community vote, in plain language

Updated August 2026. An earlier version of this article said that a building which had not voted defaulted to the old regime. That was wrong, and the correction is in the section below on buildings that have not voted.

If you’ve been following Costa del Sol property news, you’ve probably heard the phrase “3/5 vote” or “60% community vote” in the last twelve months. It refers to a single change in Spanish law that has materially reshaped how new short-term rental licences are granted in apartment buildings. Here’s what it actually says, what changed, and what it means before you make a move.

What changed

In April 2025, Spain amended the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal — the law that governs apartment-building communities. The amendment requires a three-fifths majority of the comunidad de propietarios (the community of owners) to approve any new short-term rental licence in a community building.

The key word is new. Existing licences granted before the amendment continue under the previous regime, with no community vote required. They are grandfathered in.

Why it matters

Costa del Sol property is dominated by community apartments. If you buy one with the intention of running it as a short-term rental — VUT, Airbnb, Booking — and the building has voted to prohibit short-term rental, your plan is dead before it starts. The licence application will be rejected.

We’ve seen buyers find this out after signing the deposit. It is now part of our standard pre-viewing check.

What we do, in practice

Before any viewing on a building you’re seriously considering for short-term rental, we read the comunidad meeting minutes. The vote (or lack of vote) is a matter of record. We tell you which side of the line that specific building sits on, and what (if anything) it would take to change.

For long-stay rental, the rule does not apply. For owner-occupation, it does not apply. For short-term rental, it is the single most important question to ask before making an offer.

What if a building hasn’t voted yet

This is where the rule is most often misread, and where we had it wrong ourselves until August 2026.

Silence is not permission. The amendment requires the community’s express approval before a home in a community building can be devoted to tourist use. If the matter has never been put to a vote, no approval exists — so a building that has never voted is a blocker, not a green light. The old logic, in which anything the statutes did not forbid was allowed, is exactly what the reform replaced.

The practical position has improved since the amendment landed, because time has passed. Every community is required to hold at least one ordinary general meeting a year, so by now each one has met at least once, and often twice, since April 2025. The minutes exist. A buyer no longer has to speculate about what a community might do — the record of what it has and has not decided is there to be read.

What the minutes will show is one of three things:

• An approval on the record. The community has voted in favour, by the required three-fifths of owners and quotas. This is the strongest position a buyer can find, short of a grandfathered licence.
• A refusal on the record. The community has considered it and said no. Clear, and it means the plan does not work in that building.
• Nothing at all. The item has never reached an agenda. This is the most common case and the most frequently misunderstood. It is not permission. It means the approval still has to be sought, at a future meeting, with no guarantee of the outcome.

If you are buying into that third category, you are buying the right to ask — not the right to let. The realistic timeline is the next AGM, which may be anywhere from a few months to a year away depending on where in the cycle you buy, and the vote can go against you.

The bottom line

The 3/5 rule does not close off Costa del Sol short-term rental investment, but it does change the order of operations. What used to be a question you could settle after buying is now one that has to be settled before you offer, because the answer is no until a community says otherwise. The minutes are the evidence, they exist for every building by now, and reading them costs nothing next to the price of finding out late.

If you’re considering a property with rental ambitions, ask us about the building before the viewing. We’ll have the answer before you walk through the door.