Walk along the seafront in Benalmádena Costa and you can almost map the VUT landscape by eye. Torrequebrada and Reserva del Higuerón at one end, the dense tower-blocks above Bil-Bil at the other, with the white-village calm of Benalmádena Pueblo perched on the hill behind. Three sub-towns, three quite different licensing realities — and our office in Arroyo de la Miel sits in the middle of all of them.
This guide is for owners in any of those three Benalmádenas. Where the licensing rules diverge by sub-area, we say so.
The shape of the licence
A VUT (Vivienda con Fines Turísticos) is granted by the Junta de Andalucía under Decreto 31/2024. It is the document that makes a residential property legally available for tourist short-let — Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, the SES.HOSPEDAJES guest-registration system, all of it depends on holding an active VUT.
Three operating principles to know up front:
- The VUT attaches to the property, not to the owner. Selling the property does not automatically pass the licence; it has to be transferred or re-issued through the Junta.
- The granting authority is the Junta de Andalucía, not the Benalmádena Ayuntamiento. The Ayuntamiento has been pragmatic on tourism — there is no municipal cap, no saturation register, no moratorium of the kind that exists in Málaga capital. The constraint sits at the regional and community level.
- Every active VUT must also hold an NRUA registration under Royal Decree 1312/2024 — the national rental register, in force since July 2025, that the platforms now check at listing time.
How the three Benalmádenas behave
The reason a generic Costa del Sol VUT guide is unhelpful here is that Benalmádena is three different markets stacked under one Ayuntamiento.
Benalmádena Costa — the seafront strip — has the highest VUT density and the most pro-rental community culture. Comunidades in the larger tourist-oriented developments (Torrequebrada, the older Torremuelle blocks, the cluster around Puerto Marina) have generally voted favourably on the 3/5 question because the owner base is heavily non-resident and the buildings have always carried short-let traffic. Vote outcomes in these comunidades have been mostly affirmative in 2025-2026.
Reserva del Higuerón / El Higuerón — the elevated newer-build cluster above the AP-7 — operates with a different dynamic. The estatutos in the post-2015 phases were largely silent on tourist use, and several of those communities held their 3/5 votes through the autumn of 2025. Outcomes have been mixed and have tended to track the resident-vs-investor balance in each phase: the earlier phases with longer-tenured residents have leaned more restrictive than the later investor-heavy phases.
Benalmádena Pueblo — the hilltop white village — has a much lower apartment density. Stock is dominated by townhouses, villas pareadas and small low-rise comunidades of six to twelve units. Where votes have happened, they tend to be informal and pragmatic; we have seen Pueblo comunidades resolve the question over a coffee at the AGM and ratify the position with a formal minute later. Owner profile here skews towards Spanish second-home and Northern European primary-residence, and the rental intent is generally lower-volume.
Arroyo de la Miel — the commercial inland centre — is mixed-use. Residential blocks adjacent to the Tivoli area or near Arroyo de la Miel Cercanías station have been more cautious; tourist-oriented blocks nearer the seafront and Avenida de la Constitución have leaned permissive. We see both outcomes weekly.
What the April 2025 amendment changed
Under the April 2025 amendment to the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, any new VUT in a community building now requires a 3/5 majority — 60% of the comunidad's full ownership share — to approve. Existing licences granted before April 2025 are grandfathered.
For Benalmádena the practical effect has been twofold. First, grandfathered properties in Costa-side blocks have appreciated against their unlicensed neighbours, sometimes meaningfully. Second, comunidades that had never previously thought about the question have been forced into a position — and that has surfaced quietly long-standing tensions in mixed resident/investor blocks that nobody had bothered to address.
The straightforward licence step
When the comunidad position is favourable (or the property is a freestanding villa with no comunidad), the Junta's declaración responsable process is fast. Submit the form, the technical certification, and the property documentation; the licence number is typically issued within five working days. The Benalmádena Ayuntamiento has not added a parallel local registration of the kind some Málaga capital ayuntamientos have considered.
NRUA — the post-July-2025 gating layer
The NRUA — Registro Único de Arrendamientos — went live nationally in July 2025. It cross-references every VUT with a national rental database accessible to Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, and the Spanish tax authority. A missing NRUA blocks the listing, and the platforms have been firm on this from day one.
The NRUA application is short and requires the VUT number first. We file it the day the licence comes through, and the property is usually listing-ready inside ten working days from initial submission.
Modelo N2 — the annual administrative tail
Each February, every active VUT files a Modelo N2 declaration with the Junta covering the previous year. It is administratively light — basic occupancy and tourism-statistics data — but missing it triggers a flag on the licence, and a lapsed flag in Benalmádena means falling out of grandfathering into the 3/5 rule for any future reactivation. We prepare the N2 from the monthly statements we send through the year so it is ready in January.
What a Benalmádena onboarding actually looks like
For a property in a comunidad that has already voted favourably:
- Day 0 — VUT declaración responsable submitted
- Days 1-5 — Junta licence approved
- Days 5-10 — NRUA cross-registration filed
- Day 10 onward — platform listings live, SES.HOSPEDAJES configured
For a property where the comunidad has not yet held its 3/5 vote, the realistic timeline is the next AGM. If that meeting is six months out, that is what the owner is waiting on. We will sometimes attend AGMs as the appointed manager when invited, but we do not vote — that is the owner's role.
How we help most usefully
The single most valuable thing we do for Benalmádena owners is the pre-purchase reading of the comunidad minutes. We do this for every property we consider managing, and we offer it free during the discovery call for any owner who has not yet signed. For Benalmádena specifically, the sub-area matters enormously — what is true in Torrequebrada is not true in the Pueblo and is not true in the higher-floor Higuerón phases.
If you are weighing a Benalmádena property and not sure whether your specific block has voted, call us before you offer.
