Morocco vs Spain Property Investment: An Honest Comparison

Morocco opens freehold ownership of residential and commercial property to foreigners of any nationality, with one carve-out: farmland, which needs a separate administrative route most buyers will never need. We cover the exact rules for foreign buyers here, including the one category of land that works differently.

Spain is, on paper, even simpler: any foreign buyer, resident or not, EU or not, can buy a Spanish home outright, with no special permit and no restriction by nationality. The complication is political rather than legal. In January 2025 the Spanish government proposed a tax of up to 100% on top of the purchase price for non-EU, non-resident buyers of existing homes. That bill remained stalled in parliament as of March 2026, not yet debated after the governing party lost a coalition partner's support, and the proposal would only ever apply to non-EU buyers of existing homes, never new-builds or EU nationals. For now, buying in Spain costs the same in tax whichever passport you hold.

Add Morocco's registration duty, land conservation fee and notary charges to the price you agree, and the total lands in a fairly predictable range nationwide. We list every one of those fees line by line here, because they stack in a fixed order wherever in Morocco you buy.

Spain splits the purchase tax by what you are buying. A new home bought directly from the developer carries IVA (VAT) at 10% nationwide. A resale home carries ITP, the transfer tax, instead, and ITP is set independently by each autonomous region rather than nationally, so the rate depends on exactly where in Spain you buy, not on who you are. On top of either tax, budget for notary, land registry and, on a mortgage, bank fees, much as you would in Morocco.

Sell a property in Morocco and the taxe sur les profits immobiliers (TPI) takes 20% of your net profit, or a minimum of 3% of the sale price if you made little or no profit, whichever is higher, as set out in the Code Général des Impôts for 2026. It is usually settled at the notary's office on the day the deed is signed.

Spain's equivalent for non-residents is the IRNR, charged at a flat 19% of the net gain regardless of which country you live in, and the buyer is legally required to withhold 3% of the sale price and pay it to the Spanish treasury on account of that tax. For a genuine profit, the two systems land in a similar place: low twenties as a share of the gain. Morocco's 3% floor matters more if you are selling for close to what you paid.

Morocco controls currency movement through the Office des Changes, and repatriating the proceeds of a sale means following a specific procedure rather than simply wiring the money out. We set out exactly how that works here, including the paperwork you need in place before you sell, not after.

Spain has no equivalent. As a eurozone country, it is bound by the EU's free movement of capital, one of the few EU freedoms that extends to non-EU investors as well as EU ones, so sale proceeds move in and out without a separate currency-control process. That is a genuine structural advantage if you expect to sell and leave within a few years.

Buying a property in Morocco does not, by itself, grant you the right to live there long-term. That runs through a separate residency process unrelated to the purchase.

Spain used to offer a shortcut: a residency-by-investment programme, popularly known as the golden visa, that granted a residence permit to anyone who bought at least €500,000 of Spanish property. That route closed to new applicants on 3 April 2025, when the law ending it took effect, though people who had already applied kept the permits they were granted. If residency is part of why you are looking at Spain, budget for a different route; property purchase alone no longer opens that door.

If what matters most is a flat, predictable tax bill wherever you buy and a lower entry price, Morocco is the simpler system to plan around, provided you accept the extra step required to move sale proceeds back out later. If what matters most is free movement of capital and a large, liquid resale market, Spain still delivers that, minus the residency shortcut it used to offer.

Financing changes the calculation too. Banks on both sides of the Strait lend more cautiously to a buyer without local income or residency than to one who has either, so if you are planning to borrow rather than buy in cash, start that conversation with a lender early, well before you make an offer, in Morocco or in Spain.

Neither comparison tells you what a specific property is actually worth, and we will not pretend otherwise: asking prices in Morocco move by city and by season faster than any guide can track. Our free WhatsApp communities carry what is genuinely for sale, city by city, if you want real numbers rather than averages.