Retirement planning

Retirement: it is not your age — it is the remaining term

Buyers over sixty are told: "At your age, that is no longer possible." It is wrong — but it describes a real problem in the wrong place.

Spanish banks generally require the loan to be repaid by the age of 75. Some lenders draw the line at 70, others go to 80. From that follows the arithmetic that governs the whole case: your maximum term is 75 minus your age. At 50 that is 25 years. At 62 it is 13. At 67, eight — and many lenders apply a minimum term of around ten years anyway.

The short term is not the problem. What it does to the monthly payment is. And that runs straight into the second hurdle: Spanish banks work to a debt-service ratio of 30 to 35 per cent of net income — all obligations counted together. Your existing mortgage in Germany, the Netherlands or the UK counts. Consumer credit counts. Maintenance counts.

Pension income is accepted — but it is the net pension that is used, and that is regularly well below the last net salary. Applying after retirement therefore brings a shorter term and a lower income. Both pull the same way.

Where the case can be moved

• Timing. The strongest lever is the calendar, not the bank. Applying before retirement means being assessed on employment income and a longer term.
• The debt at home. It eats the Spanish headroom. Clearing or restructuring it changes the calculation at the one point you control.
• Equity instead of term. What is missing in years has to arrive as equity. Non-residents are financed at 60 to 70 per cent of the lower of price and valuation in any case.

The most expensive mistake: paying cash because "financing is no longer possible". Once the Spanish property is paid for, only two of 15 to 20 lenders we approach will lend against it — as a rule up to 50 per cent of the valuation, with the use of funds documented (Perini Market Check, 14 July 2026). Purchase is the moment financing works. It does not come back.

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