Buying a flat in Palma: what the listing will not tell you

Most of the city was built in the 1960s and 1970s

The census counts 186,482 homes in the municipality, 5,693 of them without a construction date. Of those with a date, 74,510 are in buildings from 1961 to 1980 and 26,855 from 2001 to 2010. Homes in buildings from before 1941 number 20,932.

A block from the 1970s has had half a century of use and piecemeal repairs. At that age the roof, the façades and their balconies, the downpipes, the shared electrics and sometimes the floor structure deserve attention. None of that is assumed for a given building; it is a list of what to ask the property manager and what to look at during the viewing.

What Palma's bylaw says about the building inspection

Palma regulates the building inspection (ITE or IEE) through its bylaw on building evaluation reports, approved by the city council on 30 April 2015 and published in the Balearic Official Gazette (BOIB) no. 73 of 16 May 2015. It replaced the earlier technical-inspection bylaw and rests on Balearic Law 2/2014 on land use.

Every building aged 50 years or more must comply, whatever its use, and the report is repeated every ten years. Age is taken from the cadastral record unless the owners prove another date with the occupancy licence or the final completion certificate. The report assesses the state of repair, covering structure, façades, roofs and shared services, as well as accessibility and the building's energy efficiency.

If the result is unfavourable, the owners' duty of upkeep is only met once a favourable report is filed after the works. For a buyer, an unfavourable report without that final sign-off means pending works paid by the comunidad de propietarios, the owners' association, and therefore by you as new owner, in proportion to your share.

Where to get it, and what the report does in Palma

The bylaw has the city council forward each report to the regional housing department for its register. HOUSINGFAX does not currently integrate any building-inspection register for the Balearic Islands, and check 01 of the report says so rather than filling the gap. The practical step is to ask the property manager or the seller for the latest report filed and, if there was one, its final sign-off, before signing the arras, the deposit contract that usually comes before the deed.

What the report does with a Palma address is read the year of construction from the Spanish cadastre, the same figure the bylaw uses to set the inspection date, and use it to point out which problems are common in a building of that period and what level of likelihood of aluminosis (a known concrete problem in some Spanish buildings) results, in words and with the reason. You can also pick the specific flat within the building. A nota simple from the Land Registry tells you who owns the flat and what charges it carries; HOUSINGFAX tells you about the building.

Torrents and coast: Palma's flood zones

Spain's national flood mapping system marks four areas of significant potential flood risk in the municipality. Two follow torrents, seasonal watercourses that are dry for much of the year: the torrent Gros, shared with Marratxí, and the Na Bàrbara torrent inside Palma. The other two are coastal: Es Molinar with Es Coll d'en Rabassa, and Platja de Palma.

The ten-year river flood zone crosses the municipality, but the city does not flood evenly. That dry bed is easy to overlook when you view a flat. Check 10 of the report overlays the building's plot on the river zones from 10 to 500 years and the coastal zones of 100 and 500 years, and tells you whether any reaches it. For a ground floor, a commercial unit or a basement garage near a watercourse or the seafront, read it first.

Earthquakes, radon and prices

Palma appears in the annex of the seismic standard NCSE-02 with a basic ground acceleration of 0.04 g, the lowest value listed; check 12 gives it for the building. On radon, the municipality is outside zones I and II of the building code, and check 22 still looks up the Nuclear Safety Council's radon potential map for the location.

According to the Ministry of Housing, private housing in Palma was appraised at an average of €3,788.9 per m² in the first quarter of 2026, 14.7 % above the same quarter of 2025. It is a municipal average that mixes very different neighbourhoods: use it to put an asking price in context, not to value a flat.

What the report cannot tell you

The report collects what official registers say, with source and date, and flags what is not on record. It does not enter the home and does not replace a technical inspection of the building: if the owners' latest report lists structural defects, have a surveyor look at them before you sign.