Habitation Certificate or First Occupancy Licence

Habitation certificates (cédulas de habitabilidad) are a legal safeguard for buildings and dwellings. Beyond being an administrative occupancy permit verified and issued by the authorities, they also serve as an administrative control instrument that certifies a home's fitness for habitation.

This certificate is regulated by Decree 141/2012, of 30 October, which sets out the minimum habitability conditions for dwellings and the habitation certificate itself.

It's common to confuse the first occupancy licence with the habitation certificate, but they are not the same thing: the first occupancy licence is granted by the local town hall, while the habitation certificate is issued by the regional government.

In Andalusia, the habitation certificate was issued by the Ministry of Housing until Decree 283/1987, of 25 November, came into force, which abolished this document on the grounds that it served the same purpose as the first occupancy licence.

“The habitation certificate is abolished within the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, as is the mandatory hygiene-conditions report prior to the granting of municipal building permits — previously issued and carried out, respectively, by the Provincial Delegations of the Regional Ministry of Public Works and Transport of the Junta de Andalucía.”

Decree 283/1987, of 25 November

Therefore, if this documentation is required for a sale, purchase or rental, you will need to apply to the town hall for a copy of the first occupancy licence or, in the case of older buildings, to the provincial delegation of the Ministry of Housing to check whether a copy is on file.

In any case, the building permit can be requested by a specialist technician (an architect or building surveyor), and there are three types of first occupancy licence:

Decree-Law 3/2019, of 24 September, on urgent measures for the environmental and territorial adaptation of irregular buildings in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, establishes in its Article 2 that buildings completed before Law 19/1975 and holding a building permit for their location on non-developable land will be treated, under this regime, in the same way as buildings with a building permit. This regime does not extend to later works carried out on the building without the required building permits.

The same criterion applies to irregular buildings on urban and developable land for which the deadline to restore urban legality had already elapsed by the time Law 8/1990, of 25 July, on the Reform of the Urban Planning Regime and Land Valuations, came into force.

Finally, it's worth noting that Decree-Law 2/2020, of 9 March, on the improvement and simplification of regulations to promote productive activity in Andalusia, amends Article 169 of the LOUA (Andalusian Land Use Law), allowing the first occupancy licence for a newly built home to be obtained through a responsible declaration signed by the architect.