Hidden defects in resale homes: 6 months to claim in Alicante

You buy an apartment in central Alicante, the keys land in your hand on a Tuesday in May, and three weeks later, just as the first heatwave begins, a dark stain climbs the bedroom wall. The paint had been freshly applied. The smell arrived before the damp did.

That mould is not a quirk of the building. It is, almost certainly, a hidden defect. And the Civil Code gives you six months to do something about it.

What the Code actually says

Article 1484 of the Spanish Civil Code makes the seller answer for hidden defects in the property when those defects make it unfit for its intended use, or reduce that use to the point where, had the buyer known, they would not have signed or would have paid less. The seller need not have acted in bad faith. It is enough that the defect existed and was invisible.

Supreme Court case law requires three things for a defect to fall under this regime. It must predate the sale, not appear afterwards. It must be hidden: not visible on a normal inspection, and not detectable through the buyer's profession (if you buy a flat as a qualified architect, rotten timber beams will not pass). And it must be serious: actually affecting use, not a dripping tap or a loose plug.

Hidden defect or simple wear

This is the difficult border. Anyone buying a resale home in Alicante's Old Town, Carolinas Altas, or San Blas accepts that the wiring is not new and that the bathroom tiles have aged. Article 1484 does not guarantee the state of a new build. It protects you against what you could not reasonably expect: a termite infestation in the joists, a broken drainage line under the tiles, capillary damp painted over before the visit.

The Supreme Court has repeated it in recent rulings. Age explains wear, not pathology. A structural crack in a 1965 building remains a hidden defect if it was concealed from you.

Six months to react

Article 1490 sets the deadline. Six months from delivery of the property, not from the moment you discover the defect. And it is a caducity deadline, not a prescription one: it is not interrupted by formal letters or by conversations with the seller. It stops only when you file the lawsuit.

Six months pass quickly. If you signed in May and the stain appears in August, the clock has already eaten a third of the time between your move and the first meeting with a lawyer.

Two doors: cancel or reduce

The Code offers two options. The redhibitory action undoes the sale: you return the property and recover the price plus costs. The estimatory or quanti minoris action keeps the sale but cuts the price in proportion to the defect. In Alicante's courts the quanti minoris is the most common one: nobody wants to undo a purchase and move again.

Both share the same six-month deadline and the same evidentiary burden.

The April 2025 shift: talk before you sue

Since 3 April 2025, Organic Law 1/2025 has required something new. Before filing a civil lawsuit, the claimant must prove they attempted an MASC, an adequate dispute resolution method: mediation, conciliation, documented direct negotiation. Without that step, the claim can be dismissed at the door.

For the buyer this means the first move is no longer the court. It is a formal request to the seller, usually a certified letter with a concrete repair or refund proposal, plus proof that the other party answered, stayed silent, or refused. Whatever is discussed in that phase is confidential: it cannot be brought to trial (Article 9 of the law).

The surveyor, an unavoidable piece

No hidden-defect case is won without an expert report. The surveyor, usually a registered architect or quantity surveyor, certifies three things: that the defect exists, that it existed before the sale, and how much repair will cost. In Alicante a forensic report on construction pathologies starts around 300 € and can climb into several thousand when there are core samples, damp testing, or structural studies.

The Valencian Region Architects' Association and the Alicante College of Quantity Surveyors keep rosters of professionals available for forensic work. One call before you sign the contract, not after, can spare you the lawsuit.

Buying as a specific body does not erase it

Many resale contracts include the formula cuerpo cierto (as a specific body) or for a lump sum. A poorly advised buyer believes that clause releases the seller. It does not. The phrase refers to the surface area and registered measurements of the property, not to its condition. The Supreme Court has been clear: buying as a specific body does not exempt from the duty of sanitation for hidden defects when the defect was invisible.

There is one recognised exception in the ruling of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of 12 May 2017: if the buyer was the previous occupant or tenant and knew the actual condition of the property by having lived there, an express waiver of sanitation is valid. For everything else, the clause does not close the door.

What keeps showing up in court

The repeat cases in the provincial courts of Alicante and Valencia look alike. Capillary damp painted over the day before the sale. Termites and woodworm in the joists of flats in Ensanche Diputación or Benalúa. Broken drainage lines that produce insalubrity. Roof leaks in top-floor apartments of 1950s buildings. Affected foundations in buildings close to the rambla.

None of them is exotic. All could have been spotted by a serious technical inspection before signing.

Before the keys, not after

Three cheap gestures avoid most of these lawsuits. Book a technical visit with an architect or surveyor before the deposit, not after. Ask the seller for a written declaration of known defects: their later silence will work against them. And if the building is more than forty years old, request the Building Evaluation Report (IEE) or the ITE. If it does not exist or has expired, you know what you are signing up for.

The Civil Code gives you six months to regret it. A 300 € survey can spare you the need to use them.

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