What is the Cadastre?
The Cadastre is a public database of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, whose function is to collect the characteristics and value of all properties in Spain. Its ultimate objective is to avoid tax fraud, since the cadastral value is the one that is taken as the tax base for taxes that take into account the price of a property.
This means that it is very important that the value that appears in the Land Registry is never higher than the price we have paid for our home, premises or plot. If so, we would be paying more taxes, and the same applies if we appear as owners of a property that does not belong to us.
Problems with the ownership of the Cadastre
The change of ownership is a fairly simple procedure that is carried out when a property is acquired. From that moment there is a period of two months to update the new identity of the owner in the Cadastre.
In a maximum period of six months, the Registry will notify you of the change. In case of having had to resort to an administrative process due to some type of discrepancy, it will also notify the resolution, which is possible to appeal to the Land Registry Management.
Problems with the boundaries in the Cadastre
Another reason why we could be paying more taxes than those that correspond to us is that the physical reality of the property does not correspond to the cadastral data. Boundary and parcel measurements are sometimes out of date and can be changed.
All data will be communicated to the Administration for its consideration, and in the event of third parties involved (as in a discussion on the border of two adjoining parcels), a hearing may take place with its subsequent resolution. Otherwise, the Cadastre will communicate directly the decision made, which can be appealed to the Cadastre Management.
The cadastral value is more than what I paid
If none of the above cases is yours, perhaps the problem is that the cadastral value for your property is out of date. In-depth cadastral reviews usually take about five years, but are often delayed even longer, even doubling the term.
If the value listed for your property comes from the bubble era, your taxes will likely go down when you review it.
There is a procedure to appeal cadastral updates up to thirty days after receiving the notification, but if what you want is to claim a tax surcharge, it will be necessary to deliver a form of allegations to the Cadastre to begin a cadastral regularization process.
If it is not necessary to hire a second expert to carry out a third appraisal, you will receive the Land Registry resolution within a month. If you accept your appraisal, you can request the money that was overcharged at the City Hall.
Although the Land Registry has ways to solve these types of problems, remember that you can never enter blindly. For all these procedures you must surround yourself with expert technicians who carry out measurements or evaluations with the appropriate criteria.
