What should you check before buying a home in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria?

A city built mostly between 1961 and 1980

The 2021 census breaks down 166,652 homes in the Gran Canaria capital by construction year: 38,229 are in buildings from 1961 to 1970 and 36,964 in buildings from 1971 to 1980, so those two decades account for 45.1% of the total. The pace slows afterwards: 16,875 homes in the 1980s, 21,583 in the 1990s, 27,146 between 2001 and 2010 and only 1,432 between 2011 and 2020. Another 8,529 have no recorded year.

With that profile, many purchases are flats in blocks fifty or sixty years old. In buildings like these, ask about corroded reinforcement in balconies, overhangs and ground-floor columns, about fibre-cement downpipes and tanks that may contain asbestos, and about any special levies (derramas) planned for façades and roofs. The minutes of the owners' association (comunidad de propietarios) from the last few years usually answer many of those questions.

Radon zone II: what the building code requires

Appendix B of section HS 6 of Spain's Technical Building Code includes Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in zone II, based on measurements by the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN). For a new building in zone II, HS 6 requires a radon barrier plus an additional system: a ventilated containment space between the ground and the habitable rooms, or ground depressurisation. The aim is an indoor annual average below the 300 Bq/m³ reference level.

In an existing building, HS 6 allows those solutions to be adapted during renovation work, and if a measurement exceeds twice the reference level it points to the zone II solutions. For a buyer, the floor is what matters: a ground-floor flat, a semi-basement or a home with rooms against the soil are the cases where measuring makes most sense. The zone belongs to the municipality; only a measurement gives the real level in your home.

Coastal flooding and 5 flood-risk areas

Overlaying the municipal boundary on Spain's National Flood Zone Mapping System (SNCZI) returns 5 areas of significant potential flood risk (ARPSI in Spanish) and mapped flood zones, and the first layer that crosses the municipality is the 100-year coastal one. In a city with so much seafront, coastal flooding deserves as much attention as river flooding.

Flood zones in the municipality do not tell you whether your building is in one. What helps is seeing the entrance on the 10, 100 and 500-year river layers and on the 100 and 500-year coastal layers, and how far it is from the nearest. An unmapped stretch is not proof of no risk, and on the seafront it is worth asking whether storms have affected ground floors, garages or storage rooms.

Seismic hazard: 0.04 g, right at the code threshold

The NCSE-02 seismic code gives the municipality a basic seismic acceleration of 0.04 g, the value from which ordinary buildings are no longer exempt. At that level the code applies to residential buildings, except those with frames well braced in every direction, which are exempt below 0.08 g, and it requires the effects of an earthquake on potentially unstable ground to be considered. It is low on the code's scale, but not zero.

The building inspection in the Canary Islands and in the city

The Canary Islands Land and Protected Natural Areas Law 4/2017 regulates the building inspection (ITE or IEE in Spanish) in article 269: it is carried out by a qualified professional, covers state of repair, accessibility and energy efficiency, and is valid for twenty years. Its third additional provision requires it first for multi-family residential buildings aged 80 or more on 30 June 2018, and for the rest as they reach that age.

The city council also has a Special Bylaw on Conservation and Dilapidated Buildings, published in the provincial gazette on 17 December 1997. It provides for a façade inspection of buildings over ten years old, repeated every ten years and rolled out by phases or districts approved by the mayor's office, with its own municipal register, and a voluntary inspection of interiors and structure from 20 years. Ask the council which obligation applies to your building.

The HOUSINGFAX report does not have those registers built in. If the property manager (administrador de fincas) or the seller gives you the latest façade or structural inspection as a PDF, you can upload it and it is used to assess the building's condition.

Appraised values and recorded crime

According to Spain's Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda, the average appraised value of open-market housing in the municipality was €2,251.4 per m² in the first quarter of 2026, 7.2% more than a year earlier. It is the average for the whole city and works as a reference, not as the price of a particular flat.

The 2025 crime report of the Ministry of the Interior records 51.85 known criminal offences per 1,000 inhabitants in the municipality, against a national average of 50.38.

The report for a home in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

With an address in the city, the free report runs through the 22 checks on official sources: the Cadastre record, the radon zone, river and coastal flooding from the SNCZI with the distance to the 500-year layer, the seismic hazard at that point, the ground movement that the European Copernicus EGMS service measured by satellite between 2019 and 2023 and the hours of sunlight on each façade. The essential report costs €11 and the complete one €19, adding the building condition from the inspection you upload. The report arrives as a PDF in minutes, with no account.

The nota simple, the Land Registry extract, answers who owns the property and what charges it carries; the report answers what state the building is in and what to ask before you pay the deposit.