Was there a rush to register tourist dwellings before Spain's community-approval rule of 3 April 2025? Evidence from the Comunitat Valenciana's open registry

The rule. Since 3 April 2025, a flat in a building under Spain's Ley de Propiedad Horizontal (LPH) may be let to tourists only with the owners' association's express approval, voted by three fifths of the owners and of the shares (LPH art. 7.3 and 17.12, as worded by Ley Orgánica 1/2025, final provision 4). An owner who was already letting before that date under the regional tourism rules may carry on. The LPH's second additional provision, added by the same final provision, says so. Filing the regional declaration before 3 April was therefore a way to start without a vote. Whether a filing made just before the date protects an owner who was not yet letting is a matter of interpretation.

The data. We counted the dwellings in the Comunitat Valenciana's open tourist registry by registration date. The copy of 4 October 2026 holds 90,091 dwellings, 38,933 of them dated January 2023–August 2026. From the cadastral part of each address, read in memory and then dropped, we classified each dwelling as either:

• a unit in a divided building or complex, which the rule reaches;
• a property that takes up a whole cadastral parcel, mostly a detached house, which it does not reach.

There was a registration rush before 3 April 2025.

• Size. In the 14 days to 2 April there were 1,093 registrations against 456 expected from the January–February pattern: 2.40 times as many. None of 78 spaced placebo windows from 2023 to 2026 came close (p = 0.013). Late March is busy every year: the same 14 days ran at 1.59 and 1.27 times their baseline in 2023 and 2024. Allowing for that, the excess is about 440.
• Where. 55% of the excess (352 of 637) is in two municipalities: the city of València (+200) and Torrevieja (+151).
• València city. It ran at 4.43 times its expected count before the deadline and at 0.32 times in the four weeks after.
• The city's own draft rule. On 31 January 2025 the city announced a draft rule: «No se podrá destinar a apartamento turístico un piso en una comunidad de vecinos». Its council approved it initially in April 2025.
• The single day. Of the 287 registrations in the region on 2 April, 172 were in València city. They sit in 55 buildings (by street and number), 89 of them in buildings with five or more. 73 have no cadastral reference, against 4.6% of the region's January–February registrations.
• Torrevieja. It ran at 4.10 times before the deadline and 2.52 times after it. That is a level shift, not a deadline rush, so we report it separately.
• Elsewhere. The rest of the region ran at 1.82 times, or about 1.29 times after the seasonal allowance (+143).
• Flats against houses. Within municipalities, flats rose more than houses: the contrast is 1.73, over 35 municipalities with both kinds (826 flats and 54 houses in the window). But 6 of 78 placebo windows were as large (p = 0.089; placebo-calibrated 95% interval 0.92–3.22), so the contrast is not statistically clear. The pooled contrast of 2.02 mostly reflects that the two municipalities where registrations spiked have almost no houses.
• Cause. The rush cannot be attributed to the LPH rule alone. València's own ban was coming, and at least one English-language outlet told Costa Blanca readers that 3 April was a deadline to register.

The pace fell afterwards, mostly for flats and houses alike.

• Against two years before. From September 2025 to August 2026, 6,253 dwellings were registered, against 13,154 from September 2023 to August 2024. That is a ratio of 0.48 (CI 0.39–0.57), or 0.44 once the earlier period's cancelled registrations are put back.
• Against 2022. 2023–24 was a boom: against 2022 the ratio is 0.88, or 0.72 corrected for cancellations.
• Timing. The fall starts in May 2025 and is common to both kinds until September: in May–August 2025 flats and houses ran at 0.66 and 0.65 of a year earlier.
• A possible flats-specific fall. From October 2025 flats ran below houses every month. Paired by calendar month, flats' odds against houses were 0.83 (95% CI 0.71–0.97) of their September 2022–August 2023 level, and 0.70 (0.62–0.80) of their September 2023–August 2024 level. A modest fall specific to flats may therefore exist. Its size depends on the reference period and its timing fits no single measure, so it cannot be attributed to the rule.
• The Generalitat's figure points the other way. It said the 8,579 dwellings registered in the year from 8 August 2024 were «casi el doble que en el periodo anterior». The file has 11,237 dwellings dated in that year against 13,451 in the year before (0.84).

What the date means, and what is missing.

• The date. fecha_alta is «Fecha de alta en el registro». A strong test shows it is set before the registry number. The 23 dwellings dated in 2026 that appeared after the Internet Archive copy of 14 September all carry numbers above every number already published. The filing date is the most plausible reading.
• Survivorship. The open file keeps only live entries. The GVA's historical list keeps cancelled ones, and shows that 91.3% of the September 2023–August 2024 registrations are still in today's file: 91.1% of those in buildings and 92.3% of chalets.
• The national registry. Real Decreto 1312/2024 entered into force on 2 January 2025, and its provisions took effect on 1 July 2025. It does not share the 3 April date.
• Andalucía and País Vasco. Both registries also peak just before the deadline. Andalucía had 787 registrations on 31 March 2025, and 3,955 in the last two weeks against 838 expected. But both date fields behave like office-processing dates: no registrations on the weekend before the deadline, and 629 in Andalucía on 3–4 April, after it.
• Catalonia. The LPH does not apply there, but its open registry has no registration date.

A count of registrations is not a count of new tourist flats. We publish aggregates only.