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Spain named country where Brits most want to retire in the world

Analysis of search engine data has revealed that Spain is officially the country where most Britons want to retire.

Published: 21 April 2023 09:20 CEST
Spain named country where Brits most want to retire in the world
A man sunbathes in a designated roped-off area on Poniente Beach in Benidorm on June 21, 2020. Photo: JOSE JORDAN/AFP.

Though it’s long felt anecdotally true to say that Spain is the favourite retirement destination among Brits, there is now data to back up the claim.

After a new study revealed the top 10 countries in the world where Brits want to spend their retirement, Spain has come out on top.

Experts at Retirement Solutions have dug into the data and studied the average monthly Google search volume for different search phrases relating to retiring abroad.

READ ALSO: MAP: Where do Spain’s British residents live in 2023

They combined different Google search terms with each country to calculate the total search volume and ranked them according to the results. The following searches were analysed:

  • ‘retire in X’ 
  • ‘best place to retire in X’ 
  • ‘best places in X to retire’ 
  • ‘can I retire in X’ 
  • ‘how to retire in X’ 
  • ‘retire in X from UK’ 

Spain – a retirement paradise?

In news that might not surprise many, the country with the highest average monthly search volume was Spain, with 1,050. Spain has long been a popular retirement destination for Britons, and remains so despite the bureaucratic complications of Brexit. In fact, even after Brexit Spain’s British population continues to grow.

That’s according to new data from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE), which shows that the number of Brits residing in Spain has actually increased by 11,047 over the past year.

READ ALSO: 

The reasons why Britons might want to retire in Spain seem limitless, but the main draws are the pleasant climate, affordability, proximity to friends and family in Britain, and the gentle pace of life. With the rising cost of living across Europe, particularly skyrocketing utilities bills in the UK, many retirees from across Europe have decided Spain is the best place to live off their savings and pension while avoiding rising prices.

Where do British retirees live in Spain?

According to the latest figures from Spain’s Ministry of Migrations, there are a total of 409,763 Brits living in Spain. This is over 115,000 more than the figure stated by Spain’s official stats body INE, who gauge the number by those with TIE cards, which not all Brits have.

The sociological profile of British residents in Spain may be unsurprising to many. The average age is 54 years old, considerably higher than other non-Europeans migrant groups, most notably Pakistanis and Moroccans, both groups with median ages of 33 years.

READ MORE: The places in Spain where Brits outnumber locals

Most popular Spanish regions for Brits to live in

It might not come as a surprise to discover that in early 2023 the biggest number of Brits in Spain lived in the southern region of Andalusia, home of the famous Costa del Sol, with a total of 92,180.

This was followed closely by the Valencia region, which includes Alicante province, with a total of 87,699, and then the Canary Islands with 29,631. 

Other autonomous communities with a sizeable British population are Catalonia with 24,689, the Balearic Islands with 19,569, Murcia with 17,562 and the Spanish capital of Madrid with 11,831.

READ ALSO: How much money do Britons need to move to Spain in 2023?

Most popular provinces

Meanwhile, the latest data from the padrón register also shows where the majority of Brits live on a provincial level. And unsurprisingly the provinces housing the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol are the most popular.

Of Spain’s 50 provinces, Alicante in the Valencia region comes top once again with 76,739 Brits. This coastal province is of course home to popular spots among Brits such as Benidorm, Torrevieja and Jávea, where those from Blighty represent anywhere between 10 and 30 percent of the total population and sometimes even run in municipal elections.

READ ALSO: What makes Spain a great place to retire to?

The Spanish province with the second biggest British population in 2023 is Málaga province with 56,019. Similarly, places like Benahavís, Marbella or Estepona have a sizeable British representation. 

In third place are the Balearic Islands, which isn’t classified as a province but rather a region made up of four main islands, with Mallorca housing the bulk of the 20,000 Brits who live in the archipelago. 

Murcia, which is also not a province but a region, has its British population living mainly along the coast and in particular in the municipality of Mazarrón, where a 8,000-strong British population make up a third of residents.

The Retirement Solutions Rankings

Spain came out on top in the rankings, and the rest of the top 10 was made up of familiar retirement destinations, including Australia (2nd), Iberian neighbour Portugal (3rd), Thailand (4th),  Canada (5th), France (6th), India (7th), New Zealand (8th), Italy (9th), and Greece (10th).

A spokesperson from Retirement Solutions said of the study’s findings: “There are many ways to spend your retirement, whether that be picking up new hobbies or becoming more active – but one thing that many people may not get to experience as well as they’d like to is visiting different countries and exploring new cultures. For this reason, retiring abroad is very appealing to many Brits.” 

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RENTING

Do I have to pay the estate agent a commission if I rent in Spain?

Who has to pay the real estate agent commission (usually equivalent to one month's rent) in Spain: the landlord or the new tenant? And are there exceptions to the rules or underhand tricks agents use to get tenants to cough up more money?

Published: 24 April 2024 10:16 CEST
Do I have to pay the estate agent a commission if I rent in Spain?

Up until 2023, the general rule in Spain was that both the landlord and the tenant would both have to pay estate agency fees when a rental contract was processed through them, although in some cases it was just the arrendatario (tenant) rather than the arrendador (landlord) who had to foot most of this commission.

Tenants often had the sense they weren’t getting much in return out of it, as it was common to find apartments hadn’t been cleaned, filled with broken furniture and other appliances that weren’t working.

On top of a commission to the agency equal to one month of rent, tenants had to pay one to two month’s deposit and a month’s rent, meaning they had to pay a total of three to four months’ worth of fees upfront, which would rack up to a lot of money. 

READ ALSO: The cities in Spain where people fight most over a place to rent 

Thankfully, Spain’s housing law, brought into force in May 2023, put an end to this and now it’s solely down to the landlord to pay the agency fee as they’re the ones who hired them.

The law, which modified part of the Urban Leasing Law of 1994, now states: “The expenses of real estate management and formalisation of the contract will be borne by the lessor,” that is, the owner of the property.

READ ALSO – Renting in Spain: Can my partner move in with me?

One of the main problems is that agencies have been doing this for so long that they stand to lose quite a bit of money and may continue to ask tenants to pay on the side. 

Alejandro Fuentes-Lojo, a lawyer specialised in real estate law explained to Spanish news site Newtral: “Many professionals will try to circumvent this prohibition, and in some cases they will try to make the tenant pay out of pocket, but we must warn that if they agree, they will be unprotected by the law”.

Be aware, even though tenants shouldn’t have to pay the full agency fees anymore, there are certain circumstances in which they may still have to pay something.

The Rental Negotiating Agency (ANA), states that there are a series of exceptional cases where real estate agencies can pass some of these expenses on to tenants, specifically when they are offered a series of additional services that directly benefit them.

These expenses could include house cleaning services at the end of the lease, repair services and legal advice during the duration of the contract, or other services where it can be proven that they have a direct benefit for the tenants. These expenses can only be collected after the contracts are signed.

READ ALSO – Q&A: When can you legally leave a rental property in Spain? 

The general director of ANA and a lawyer specialised in leasing, José Ramón Zurdo, states: “The new Housing Law does not regulate or limit the impact of expenses that accrue after the signing of the contracts, because the limit of expenses that can be passed on is closed after this time”.

According to the new housing law, expenses that can’t be passed on to the tenant include management expenses charged by real estate agencies for intermediating, searching for tenants and showing the homes. Tenants can also not be charged for expenses of formalising contracts or paying any lawyers or notaries involved.

There are also four exceptional cases where agencies can still charge fees to tenants, when they are not habitual residence leases and, therefore, are not regulated by the Urban Leases Law.

These include:

  • Tourist accommodation
  • Rental of commercial or office space
  • Seasonal rentals
  • Luxury housing leases – Properties whose surface area exceeds 300 m2 built, or whose rent exceeds the interprofessional minimum wage by 5.5 times.

READ ALSO: Spanish court rules buyer can purchase property directly from seller without paying agency fees

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