In short: buying an occupied property in Spain, including one with squatters inside, is legal and comes at a discount, but that discount pays for the time and cost of recovering possession. The real decision is whether to negotiate a quick exit or go to court in exchange for a lower price.
- The discount usually ranges from 20% to 40% and can reach 60-70% in long occupations with damage (industry sources with a commercial interest).
- The court route can take between 8 and 18 months (RealAdvisor).
- Spain's Interior Ministry recorded 16,426 cases of illegal occupation in 2024.
- In our hypothetical example, negotiating frees the flat in 2-4 months for €120,000; litigating costs €94,000 and takes 8-18 months.
Before you read on, one important clarification. If you are here because you have just bought (or are about to buy) a repossessed property or a defaulted mortgage that turned out to be occupied, the article you need is our guide to court-ordered eviction of occupied homes after an NPL purchase, part of this blog's series on distressed mortgage debt. That guide treats occupation as a risk that surfaces in a different kind of deal.
This article is different: it treats the occupied home as an asset class chosen on purpose, with two clearly distinct entry strategies. You either negotiate a quick exit and pay a little more, or you take on the full court process in exchange for a bigger discount.
What an occupied property is
An occupied property is a home whose physical possession is held by someone with no legal right to be there: they are neither the owner nor a tenant with a valid lease. Ownership and use are separated in practice, and that is why the property sells at a discount. The buyer acquires ownership but not possession, and has to recover it either through an agreement with the occupant or through the courts.
It is not the same as a tenant in arrears, who moved in with a lease and stopped paying, nor a home with a usufructuary, who lives there under a right recorded in the title deed. As an investment category, an occupied property is bought knowing up front that the price builds in the time, the legal cost and the uncertainty of getting possession back.
Squatters in Spain: what is legal, how long it takes and what it costs
Buying an occupied home is entirely legal in Spain (nothing prevents an owner from transferring title to a property with illegal occupants, known locally as okupas), but recovering physical possession may require a court eviction process, or desahucio, that even after recent legal reforms can take between 8 and 18 months depending on the case (RealAdvisor). The discount on the purchase price exists precisely to compensate for that time, that legal cost and that uncertainty. It is not a bargain without a catch.
How many cases there really are: the official figure
Before getting into strategy, it helps to size the market with the best official source available. According to Spain's Interior Ministry, in 2024 there were 16,426 recorded cases of illegal occupation in Spain. The figure gives the phenomenon its real scale, although not all of these cases are investment opportunities, far from it: the vast majority are occupations of empty homes with no link to any sale. On the court side, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ, the governing body of Spain's judiciary) reports that between January and March 2026 courts carried out 4,005 evictions across Spain (lanzamientos, the physical removal of occupants by court order), down 45.4% on the same period a year earlier. Of these, 64.9% were for unpaid rent (down 53.9%) and 24.2% for mortgage foreclosure (down 18.3%) (Infobae, with CGPJ data). By region, Catalonia had the highest number of evictions that quarter (921), followed by the Valencia region (741), Andalusia (616) and Madrid (582). However, if you look specifically at civil claims for occupation (rather than eviction for non-payment), Andalusia leads with 94 proceedings, 20.43% of the national total (Infobae).
One distinction worth keeping in mind: the CGPJ eviction data measures evictions in general (mostly tenants with a lease who stopped paying rent), not illegal occupation without any title. It is cited here because it is the most solid official benchmark for the timing and volume of Spain's court system when it comes to recovering homes, but it should not be read as a statistic on "squatted flats" in the strict sense of the term.
Two strategies, not one
The most common mistake when researching this asset is treating it as a single decision (should I buy an occupied flat or not?) when there are actually two entry strategies with different economics, which the sections below compare in detail.
What discount is realistic
The sources consulted place the discount on an occupied home, compared with its vacant market value, in a wide range: between 20% and 40% in the general case, up to 60-70% for long occupations with significant damage, and down to 20-30% for recent occupations (under 6 months) with minor damage (RealAdvisor; Urban Desokupa; Investfy). The range is wide on purpose. The real discount depends on very deal-specific variables (whether the occupant is the former owner or an unrelated third party, whether an unpaid lease is involved, how long the property has been occupied and in what condition, whether the seller is desperate to sell fast) that can only be known case by case, not from a generic table. As a general rule cited by several industry sources, the deal starts to make economic sense when the discount exceeds 30-40% of vacant market value and the buyer has enough cash to cover both the eviction process and any repairs to the property.
A word of caution about where this figure comes from: many of the available guides on occupied-property discounts are published by "desokupa" companies (firms that specialise in removing squatters) with a direct commercial interest in selling that very service. Keep that bias in mind when reading any industry figure, including the ones cited in this article.
Average return when reselling an occupied property
There is no consolidated public series measuring the average net margin an investor makes by buying an occupied flat, recovering possession and reselling it. No official source (the national statistics institute INE, the Bank of Spain, notaries) publishes it specifically for this category, unlike general residential rental yields. As a rough benchmark, industry sources such as Gibobs note that in practice the real purchase discount tends to stay below 30%, and that eviction and repair costs (the property is often in poor shape after months or years of occupation) eat up much of that initial margin. The final net return ends up much tighter than the headline entry discount suggests (Gibobs).
The real margin depends, more than in almost any other category covered in this guide, on variables you only discover after recovering possession: the physical condition of the property, whether fixtures and fittings have been stripped out, and how much the area has appreciated while the process lasted. In markets with sustained price growth, that effect can widen the margin beyond the initial discount; in flat markets, the cost of the process can absorb it almost entirely. The table in the next section illustrates the calculation with a concrete numerical example.
Negotiate or litigate: the numbers behind the two strategies
| Item | Strategy 1: aggressive discount + negotiated exit | Strategy 2: bigger discount + legal route |
|---|---|---|
| Vacant market value | €160,000 | €160,000 |
| Discount applied at purchase | 30% | 45% |
| Purchase price | €112,000 | €88,000 |
| Cost of negotiating with the occupant | €8,000 | €0 |
| Legal costs of the eviction process | €0 | €6,000 |
| Total cost until the property is vacant | €120,000 | €94,000 |
| Estimated time until the property is available | 2-4 months | 8-18 months |
Hypothetical example built from the discount ranges cited in this article's sources, not a documented real case. It shows the central trade-off: the legal route has a lower total cost but ties up capital for much longer, which lowers the real annualised IRR even if the nominal margin is higher.
What can go wrong before you recover possession
Recovering possession does not always follow a straight line. The occupant may deliberately damage the property before leaving, or strip out fixtures and contents (boilers, wiring, bathroom fittings, appliances) that push up the cost of the refurbishment. Changing the locks is also common, which physically complicates entry even after a favourable ruling. In court, the occupant can file objections or appeals that stretch the timeline beyond the initial estimate. While the process drags on, the owner keeps paying community fees and IBI (Spain's annual local property tax) with no income to offset them. That is why it pays to have the property surveyed before buying and again right after the eviction, to document any damage and adjust the real budget for getting it back into shape.
Negotiate or litigate: how to decide
Investing in occupied properties is not a single yes-or-no decision. It is a choice between paying a little more for a fast negotiated exit, or accepting a bigger discount in exchange for a longer and less certain legal process. The discount cited by the industry (20-40%, up to 60-70% in extreme cases) is real, but far from guaranteed, and it depends on variables that only emerge deal by deal. Official data from the CGPJ and the Interior Ministry confirm that the volume of cases (16,426 recorded occupations in 2024, more than 4,000 evictions in the first quarter of 2026 alone) is large enough for this asset class to offer a steady flow of opportunities, not just isolated anecdotes. Compare this strategy with bare ownership (nuda propiedad, buying a home while someone else keeps the right to live in it), which also means waiting years without using the property but with no legal conflict involved, before deciding which one fits your risk profile better.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal to buy an occupied home in Spain?
Yes, completely legal. No rule prevents the transfer of title to a property with illegal occupants; the difference is that the buyer does not get immediate physical possession, only legal ownership.
How long does an eviction take in Spain?
According to official CGPJ data, a standard eviction (a tenant with a lease who has stopped paying rent) takes between 6 months and a year from the initial claim, of which 1 to 3 months are spent just on the court admitting the case. For illegal occupation without a lease, industry sources cite a somewhat wider range of 8 to 18 months depending on the case (RealAdvisor). The real timeline varies widely by court and by the circumstances of each case.
How many cases of illegal occupation are there each year in Spain?
The Interior Ministry recorded 16,426 cases of illegal occupation in 2024, the most recent and solid official figure available. It does not measure "occupied flats for sale as an investment opportunity": it covers occupation as a whole, of which the market for buying and selling occupied homes is only one part.
Is it worth negotiating with the occupant instead of going to court?
It depends on total cost versus time: negotiating usually costs more money but far less time. As the worked example in this article shows, there is no universal right answer; it depends on how urgently the investor needs liquidity and on the margin each route leaves after all costs.
How is this article different from the blog's guide to buying an occupied flat?
This article treats the occupied home as an investment category chosen deliberately, and compares two entry strategies. Our guide to eviction of occupied homes after an NPL purchase treats occupation as a risk that appears when you buy mortgage debt or a repossessed property (REO), and focuses on how the court eviction works in those cases. If you are considering this asset class, we recommend reading both.
At Reental we turn this kind of discounted opportunity into accessible investment, so you do not have to handle the negotiation with the occupant or the legal eviction process yourself: discover the active projects at Reental.
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Legal notice
This content is for information purposes only and does not constitute individual financial, legal or tax advice. Buying an occupied home involves significant legal, financial and timing risks, including the possibility that recovering possession takes longer than expected. Consult a lawyer specialising in real estate and procedural law before you invest. Reental does not market occupied homes as its own product.
Data and sources: RealAdvisor, Equus Capital, Urban Desokupa, Investfy, Kalma (somoskalma.com), Santamaría Baeza Abogados, Spain's Interior Ministry (illegal occupation figure for 2024), General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ, Q1 2026 evictions, via Infobae). The CGPJ and Interior Ministry figures are official, but there is still no public statistic specifically tracking purchases of occupied homes as an investment. The worked example is hypothetical. Figures as of September 2026.
