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MOVING TO SPAIN

How to find a self-storage space for your belongings in Spain

If you need to temporarily store some of your stuff because you’re moving home, refurbishing, temporarily leaving Spain or running out of space at your property, this is what you need to know about available storage options.

How to find a self-storage space for your belongings in Spain
There are plenty of self-storage choices available in Spain. Photo: Aga Adamek/Unsplash

As you’re probably aware of already, Spanish homes are usually not very spacious, around 97m2 on average, according to appraisal company TecniTasa.

Sometimes, Spanish apartment blocks have a trastero, a box or storage room for each unit, located on the rooftop, in the garage area underground or somewhere in the building.  

This is where tenants and homeowners can pile up all the belongings they’re not using.

However, if you’re leaving your home permanently or temporarily and need to store some if not all of your kitchen appliances, furniture and other belongings, you won’t necessarily have access to such a trastero. And if you don’t have another place to ship your stuff to, this can be pretty challenging. 

Perhaps you’re not moving but you’re running out of space at your Spanish home and need to declutter. Maybe you’re refurbishing your home and need to put your stuff somewhere else for a while.

So what storage options are there in Spain? There are plenty. 

Storage space is a booming business in Spain (up 68 percent in the past five years), with only France and the UK surpassing Spain in the amount of storage space available for rent. 

According to the Spanish Association of Self Storage), in cities such as Seville, Barcelona, Málaga and Madrid, there’s one storage space available for at least every 20 inhabitants, so you’re likely to be spoilt for choice.   

Rent a trastero from a private owner

If you visit Idealista, Fotocasa or any other of Spain’s main property websites, you’ll find listings from private owners looking to rent out their storage room. 

Depending on their size, location and other factors, you can expect to pay anything from €30 to €200 a month. 

Before renting, you will need proof that they actually own the trastero, and you should make sure you ask all the pertinent questions regarding security, mould, insect infestations and other conditions that could damage your belongings.  

Rent a storage space from a company

Companies specialising in storage space are often called guardamuebles (furniture storers) in Spain, although many people refer to them as trasteros as well.

There are hundreds of companies that now specialise in this in Spain, so a Google search with guardamuebles and the name of your town or city should produce several useful results. 

The benefits of using a professional company over an individual lessor is that they offer more range of storage sizes tailored to your needs, and they’re likely to have facilities which are properly protected from the elements and break-ins.

It’s impossible to give an exact price for a standard of €5 per m³. So for an 8 m³ furniture storage unit, the cost could be €40 per month, and for a 30 m³ storage unit, the cost is €150 per month.

Zebrabox, Oh My Box!, Guardatodo, Homebox, Bluespace are some of the more famous names but don’t forget to shop around for good prices and offers, and to read reviews if possible.

Use a moving company to store your belongings

If you want to kill two birds with one stone and entrust the same company that will eventually move your belongings to your new home to store your stuff for a period of time, you’re in luck, because many of these mudanza companies offer such services.

Amygo, SIT, AGS Movers and Casa Rojals are some of the most well-known moving companies in Spain that also offer storage space.

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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?

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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