Sell it, let it, or keep it? Five years of each

Not in any of these columns

• Capital gains tax in the country the property is in, when you sell
• Income tax on rent there — and the non-resident landlord rules once you have left
• Spanish tax on the same income and gains once you are tax resident in Spain
• Mortgage interest and capital repayments, and any early-redemption charge
• What the sale proceeds would earn if you invested them

What this assumes

• Rent and costs stay flat in real terms; only the property value moves
• The mortgage balance does not change over the period
• Sale proceeds sit as cash and earn nothing, because what they would earn is your decision, not ours
• An empty home costs the same to keep as a let one, which if anything is generous

Questions people ask

Should I sell my house or rent it out when I move abroad?

Nobody can answer that from a web page, and anybody who does is selling something. What the numbers can tell you is how much is actually at stake between the options — often much less than people expect once fees and empty months are in — and that tells you how much the decision deserves to hang on arithmetic rather than on how you feel about the house.

What is missing from these numbers?

Tax, and it is not a small omission. Capital gains when you sell, income tax on rent in the country the property sits in, the non-resident landlord schemes, and then Spanish tax on all of it once you are resident there — any one of them can be larger than the gap between two of these options. Treat this as the shape of the decision, then have the tax modelled properly.

Why does the holiday let come from my long-term rent figure?

Because almost nobody knows their achievable nightly rate, and asking for one you have guessed would make the whole column fiction. Instead it is built as an uplift on the long let, with a much heavier cost base for cleaning, management and empty weeks, and both of those are controls you can change once you have a real number.

Should I assume my property keeps growing in value?

Set it to whatever you believe, including nothing or a fall. Growth is the input with the most leverage over the five-year picture and the least evidence behind it, which is exactly why it is a box you fill in rather than a figure we assert.

Can I keep the house and decide later?

Plenty of people do, and the “keep” column is there to show what that costs rather than to talk you out of it. An empty home still pays insurance at an unoccupied rate, standing charges and upkeep, and somebody has to be able to get into it. What it buys is a year to be sure, which for many people is worth exactly what it costs.