Zone guide · Dénia
The Port and Baix la Mar in Dénia
The harbour quarter, where people live all year rather than for a fortnight. What a non-resident buyer actually has to check between the marina and the market.
4.9 from 104 Google reviews · Juan Bertomeu, abogado ICALI 4643 · Our Dénia office: Calle Ramón y Cajal 5E · Legal position last reviewed July 2026
So, the first thing to understand is that this is not a resort. The port is a working harbour with a ferry terminal and a fish market, and Baix la Mar behind it is the old fishermen's quarter, low pastel houses in narrow streets that were here long before anyone came on holiday. Legally that changes what matters. You are mostly buying flats and old town houses rather than villas on plots, which means your neighbours, the community statutes and a ten-year-old piece of paper about the water supply matter more here than they would on the hillside.
It also means the holiday-let question is genuinely open. Dénia has drawn a map of where new tourist licences can and cannot happen, and the port is not on the published side of it. Anyone who tells you flatly that you can let a flat here, or flatly that you cannot, is guessing. We do not guess. We check the exact address against the live position at the town hall.
Our office is on Calle Ramón y Cajal 5E, Oficina 1, five minutes from these streets. Juan Antonio Bertomeu Vallés, abogado (ICALI 4643), has practised on this coast since 1991. I am Daniel Bertomeu and I do the tax side, AEDAF 06838. Between the Dénia and Moraira offices we hold 4.9 from 104 Google reviews. If you want a straight answer about a specific street, walk in and ask for one.
Who buys in The Port and Baix la Mar
The port sorts its buyers differently from the villa zones. People choose here because they want to walk: to the market, to the lonja at auction time, to a doctor, to a coffee at eight in the morning in January. We see Dutch and German couples downsizing out of a big house on the Montgó. We see British buyers who have decided a car is a nuisance. Nordic owners come for the ferry, the airport road and a place they can lock up and leave. What we notice most is how many are on their second property in Dénia rather than their first, which tells you most of what you need to know about the quarter.
What we actually check in The Port and Baix la Mar
Your neighbours vote before the town hall does
This is a quarter of flats, and that puts a gate in front of any letting plan that has nothing to do with the council. Since 3 April 2025, Ley Orgánica 1/2025 added article 17.12 to the Ley de Propiedad Horizontal: starting a new tourist let in a block needs the community of owners to approve it by a three fifths majority. So the statutes of your building can settle the question before the address does. Whether your community has already taken that vote is not something you can tell from the flat, so we read the statutes and the minutes of the last few meetings before you sign anything. A licence you cannot use inside your own block is an expensive thing to find out about afterwards.
Old houses, and the paper that turns the water on
Baix la Mar houses are old and most have been reformed at least once, sometimes informally. What you need is the declaración responsable de segunda ocupación under Decreto 12/2021 del Consell. It runs for ten years and has to be renewed on transmission or when a new utility contract is taken out, and without it you cannot put water or electricity in your name. Sellers rarely raise it. We ask for it early, and at the same time we check that what is physically built matches what the Land Registry and the Catastro say is built. In these streets a terrace closed in years ago and never declared is the sort of thing that turns up late.
How close the sea is, in law rather than in metres
The Ley de Costas protects a strip running 100 metres inland from the shore, cut to 20 metres where the land was already urban in 1988. Around a harbour you cannot work that out from the terrace, and the general rule is not the answer anyway. The deslinde, the official line fixed on the ground, is what decides what a property may become and what may be rebuilt. For anything close to the water we pull the deslinde position for that exact plot rather than reason from the map.
What the purchase costs on top of the price
On a resale you pay ITP at 9% in the Comunidad Valenciana for taxable events from 1 June 2026 under Ley 5/2025 (DOGV, 31 May 2025), with 11% on the part of the price above 1,000,000 euros. Deeds signed before that date paid 10%. A new build pays 10% IVA plus 1.4% AJD instead, where deeds before 1 June 2026 paid 1.5%. Notary fees run roughly 0.2% to 0.5% of value and the Land Registry roughly 0.1% to 0.25%. Then there is the one that catches buyers here as much as anywhere: if your seller is non-resident, you withhold 3% of the price and pay it to the AEAT on Modelo 211 within one month of completion. That is your obligation as the buyer, not the seller's, and it is your problem if it is missed.
Holiday lets and the Dénia suspension
The port: the one zone where we will not give you a rule
Now, here is where I have to be honest rather than useful. Dénia suspended new tourist-use compatibility certificates in its urban core from 11 September 2024, extended and in force from 12 September 2025, and it expressly left Les Marines, Les Rotes and Montgó outside that suspension, so new licences remain possible in those three. The port and Baix la Mar are not a zone the town hall has published a clean answer for. I am not going to invent one so the answer looks tidier. We check the exact address against the live position before you commit, and that check is worth more here than anywhere else in the town. There is also movement coming: on 5 June 2026 the council gave initial approval to a permanent ordinance that would cut urban-core licences from 639 to 344 from 2029, with some streets keeping them only as flats fall vacant and others losing them as licences lapse. It is not final and it sits in public consultation. Which is precisely why the answer has to be about your street on the day you buy, not about the district in general.
Tourist rental licences in Dénia: the zone map and our fixed feeOwning in The Port and Baix la Mar, the tax side
Owning here, just owning, carries an annual filing. As a non-resident you file Modelo 210 with the AEAT even in a year the flat sat empty, on an imputed income of 1.1% of the valor catastral if that value was revised in the last ten years, otherwise 2%. EU and EEA owners pay 19% and can deduct expenses against real rental income. Non-EU owners, and that means the UK since Brexit, pay 24% on the gross, though one thing stayed in their favour: capital gains on a sale are still 19%. The deadlines have just moved. Under Orden HAC/623/2026, imputed income accrued from 2026 onwards is filed between 1 April and 31 December of the following year, while imputed income up to 2025 can still go in any time during the following calendar year to 31 December. Rental income accrued from 2026 has one window only, the first twenty calendar days of April of the following year. Separately, Dénia does not collect its own local taxes. IBI, plusvalía and the waste charge all come through SUMA, so when a demand lands in your postbox with SUMA on it rather than the Ayuntamiento, that is normal and it is not a scam. Wealth tax catches far fewer owners now, since the Comunidad Valenciana lifted the exempt minimum from 500,000 to 1,000,000 euros from 31 December 2025, and non-residents are assessed on Spanish assets only.
Modelo 210 in Dénia: what non-resident owners file, and our feeThe Port and Baix la Mar: questions buyers actually ask
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+34 614 08 68 07DÉNIA OFFICE
Calle Ramón y Cajal 5E, Oficina 1, 03700 Dénia, Alicante
MORAIRA OFFICE
Calle del Dr. Calatayud, 39, planta baja, 03724 Moraira, Alicante