While there will be no increase in the Real Estate Tax (IBI) in 2024 in Orihuela, which many municipalities in the province are carrying out due to the drop in income, more taxes will be collected when the cadastral (property and land value) update that the City Council has initiated is completed. This will be the first cadastral review to be carried out in the municipality for 30 years, so the values are completely outdated.
The value of real estate properties has been frozen since 1994, the year in which the last cadastral review was carried out in the municipality. This value is fundamental to establish municipal income through the IBI. The departments of Finance, in the hands of the mayor himself, Pepe Vegara, and Urban Planning, led by Matías Ruiz, will manage the procedure to resolve discrepancies and omissions regarding updated values.
The process began last August with the forecast that it will take between 12 and 16 months to complete, due to the complexity of revaluing thousands and thousands of homes across the municipal area, so it will not be ready until summer or the end of 2024.
According to municipal sources, it is thought that many real estate properties are either not registered or are not reflected in the database of the cadastre with their true value, especially in Orihuela Costa, where property owners are paying less for the IBI and, in others, such as in areas of the Rabaloche neighbourhood in the city centre, who are paying more. There is an obvious imbalance.
There are homes in Orihuela Costa, next to the sea, that are paying 130 euros for the IBI, when others in the centre of Orihuela, of a similar size, pay three times more. There are also many properties on the coast that pay three or four times less for this tax than those in Pilar de la Horadada or on the Torrevieja coast.
The cadastral update will force many owners to pay more for this tax in future, given that the value of their property is outdated and they are currently paying much less. For others, more humble homes, the review will affect them in the opposite way, they will pay less because the value of their house is lower than what the cadastral register indicates.
Although the measure will be extremely unpopular it is one that will avoid having to raise the IBI. The Orihuela City Council currently collects around 27 million euros annually for this tax. With the cadastral update, income will be increased by approximately 10 million euros. The IBI tax rate itself will remain frozen. It currently stands at 0.695%, in the case of urban properties, and at 0.65% elsewhere.
This is a higher rate than that of many other towns, such as Torrevieja, which is 0.40%, or Benidorm, 0.667% (it will rise to 0.82% in 2024), but lower than others such as Elche, 0.8729% (it will drop by 1% in 2024) or Elda (0.968%), according to 2023 data published by the Ministry of Finance.
As for the garbage rate, it will not increase in 2024, although it undoubtedly will in 2025, due to European and state regulations, when all Councils must cover the cost of the garbage collection service from monies directly collected, without any municipal contributions.
