You signed an unfurnished lease. The flat is four walls, a boiler and a wardrobe somebody left behind. The decision in front of you is not cheap against expensive. It is how long you are actually going to stay.
Less than you think in some rooms, more in others. A Spanish unfurnished flat normally has kitchen cabinets, a hob and often an oven, built-in wardrobes, light fittings and sometimes a washing machine. It normally does not have beds, a sofa, a table, curtains, lamps or a shower curtain. A washing machine is the classic surprise, and so is the absence of an oven in older refurbishments.
Bed sizes are the second surprise. Spain runs on 90, 135, 150 and 180 cm widths, and linen bought in the UK or Germany for a 140 or 160 bed will not fit properly. Plugs are type F at 230 V, so British appliances need adapters and American ones need a transformer. None of this is a crisis, but it is a week of small errands you did not plan.
Second-hand is the default for a lease under three years. Milanuncios puts the cost of furnishing a two-bedroom flat with the basics at around €1,797, and that figure matches what we see: a decent bed and mattress €350–600, a sofa €150–400, a table with chairs €120–250, a wardrobe €150–350. Wallapop and Milanuncios carry the volume; the Encants in Barcelona (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) fills the gaps with lamps, chairs and side tables at prices that make no sense until you carry them home.
New furniture at IKEA level runs €4,000–20,000 for a whole flat depending on size and quality, with delivery in one to three weeks and assembly charged separately. It is the best version of the flat and the worst version of your bank balance if you are here for eighteen months.
Rental furniture is priced per piece and the catalogue numbers are small enough to look harmless: €19.61 for a bedside table, €26.58 for a chair, €40.59 for a lamp, €60.17 for a desk, €69.87 for a sofa. Add twenty pieces and you are in the low hundreds a month, on a twelve or twenty-four month contract, plus 21% IVA, with delivery and collection included in the better packages. At the end you own nothing, which is the point and also the cost.
Under eighteen months, rent the furniture or buy second-hand and resell on the way out. Second-hand holds roughly 30–50% of what you paid, so a €1,800 flat becomes €600–900 back. Between eighteen months and four years, second-hand wins on every count. Past four years, buy new and stop thinking about it, because you will sit on that sofa for a decade.
The expensive mistake we see most often is buying a whole flat in the first week. People furnish a house they have not lived in yet, discover that the light in the living room is wrong for the desk, that the bedroom fits a 135 bed and not the 150 they bought, and that the kitchen has nowhere for a proper bin. Buy the bed, the sofa and a table. Live a month. Then fill the rest, when you know how the light moves.
Shipping from the UK runs roughly £1,200–2,200 for a one-bedroom, £2,000–3,600 for two and £3,000–5,500 for three, door to door, before customs paperwork. Do the sum against buying here: a container of sentimental furniture rarely pays for itself, but a good mattress, a proper desk and the kitchen things you actually cook with often do. What never survives the trip is the flat-pack wardrobe, which arrives as a pile of panels and a memory.
Most long-term villas here come furnished or semi-furnished, because owners who rent at €4,000–7,000 a month are not normally trying to save on a sofa. The exceptions are long lets where the owner has emptied the house, and those are worth asking about specifically: garden furniture, pool equipment, the BBQ, tools, the spare fridge in the garage.
If the owner leaves furniture, list it and its condition, including the things you would rather not inherit. A fifteen-year-old sofa that was already tired on day one should be described as tired on day one, or you will be buying its replacement at the exit.
We can tell you what the last tenants did, which shops deliver to your street and whether the owner will leave the garden furniture. Small things, but they save a fortnight.
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