2. Bank statements alone aren’t generally accepted as proof of income.
Even if you have bank statements showing that you have enough savings to cover the
rent, your landlord will still probably ask for a Spanish employment contract and a pay
stub, called a nómina.
Obviously, if you’re retired and you don’t work, you won’t have a pay stub. You have
a pension, investment dividends, retirement savings, or any other
passive income streams that made it possible for you to move to Spain in the first
place. All of which would be reflected in a bank statement.
Some popular visas for retirees, like the Non-Lucrative Visa or NLV, are purely
residency visas and prohibit the recipient from working. Instead, the Spanish
government requires that people on the NLV demonstrate sufficient funds in their bank
account to support themselves for an entire year without a job.
Most landlords are unfamiliar with this condition and still request three months’ worth
of nóminas, despite the government itself requiring bank statements as proof of
financial stability to live in the country in the first place.
✔ Solution: Have open, honest conversations about your visa restrictions if
you’re not allowed to work. Itemize your income streams and include a mini
report in Spanish and English alongside your bank statement. If applicable,
present the proof of financial stability required for the NLV. Having these
documents at the ready will build trust with your landlord and show that you’re
a prepared, responsible tenant even if you’re not employed by a Spanish
company.
✔ Solution: If your landlord is still concerned that you won’t make rent,
you can get a bank to guarantee your monthly payments. You need to be an
existing
client of the bank and pay various fees throughout the life of the guarantee, but
it’s much safer than paying 3-6 months’ rent in advance directly to the landlord. If
the owner insists on cash in hand instead of a bank guarantee, that’s a major
red flag. It tips the power balance too far in the landlord’s favor and puts the
tenant at risk of losing significantly more money than just the deposit if
something goes wrong.
3. You’re expected to have a Spanish bank account before you sign the lease.
The deposit, first month’s rent, and agency fees3
are due as soon as you sign the
contract, even if it’s weeks before your lease actually starts. As such, you’ll need a
bank account that can make instant transfers in euros. If you're from the United States, this step is especially important, because
traditional American banks still don’t offer either of these services.
Your only recourse here is to open a Spanish bank account. Most
banks require a TIE to open an account with them. As we discussed in an earlier
Hidden Step, it’s virtually impossible for you to get your TIE before you sign a lease,
and to sign a lease, you need a Spanish bank account. Luckily, a select few Spanish
banks accept just a passport to open an account. We’ll go into a full debrief of banking
in Spain in a future Blueprint.
Once you’ve signed the contract and transferred all relevant payments, the landlord
will need your Spanish bank account number to put the utility bills in your name. Utility
bills are debited directly from your account and can’t be paid by credit card.
✔ Solution: Open a Spanish bank account at a local branch or a digital bank
that offers a Spanish bank account number, like N26 and Revolut. As we mentioned above, some
banks let you open an account with just your passport while others require a TIE. We
recommend funding the account with four times your
maximum monthly rental budget before you sign the lease. You’ll cover the
minimum requirement of one month’s deposit and the first month’s rent, plus
two additional months of buffer.
Let’s say you find an apartment you love and the landlord is requesting the
mandatory one months’ deposit down plus an additional two months of
guarantee. If you negotiate to knock off the additional guarantee, great! If the
landlord won’t budge, you need to have that money sitting in your account ready
to transfer if you still want the apartment.
LIVED EXPERIENCE
We didn’t have a Spanish bank account when we signed our lease and were
left playing the fool – not because we didn’t have the deposit money, but because it
was all stuck in dollars in an American bank. We didn’t have time to open a traditional
bank account, so we exchanged our dollars for euros using Wise and transferred the
money to our landlord. This is doable, but not the best solution, since you’ll pay
conversion fees and you can’t pay utilities with a Wise account. Once we got a Spanish
bank account, we used that account to pay rent and our bills, but we wish we’d been
prepared in the moment.