Sagunto housing licences 2026: 1,200 homes approved and €4.8 million in ICIO tax
Sagunto has granted licences for 1,200 homes in 2026 and expects about 300 more before year end. ICIO revenue reached €4.8 million by September, more than any full year from 2023 to 2025.
Between January and early October 2026, the Urbanism department of Sagunto City Council granted licences for 1,200 homes. The department expects to authorise about 300 more by December, so the year could close at around 1,500. A licence allows building to start, but it does not mean the homes have already been delivered.
By type, 1,050 are flats in apartment blocks, close to nine in ten. Another 45 belong to developments of multiple single-family homes and 26 are individual single-family houses. The remaining 79 come from changes of use, where existing buildings are converted into housing.
ICIO is the Tax on Constructions, Installations and Works, a municipal levy on works that require a licence, which makes it a thermometer of construction investment. Between January and September 2026, the city's coffers received €4,800,000 from it. That is 77% more than in all of 2025 (€2,709,623) and 20% more than in 2024 (€4,002,178); compared with 2023 (€1,731,514), revenue has almost tripled. Put differently, with a quarter of the year still to go, 2026 has already beaten each of the three previous full years.
Javier Raro, the councillor for Urbanism, reads these figures as good news: when new housing is built, it becomes easier to get a home both for people who already live in Sagunto and for those who are moving in. Even so, he argues that the free market alone will not solve the housing crisis and calls for real involvement from the other administrations. He points out that the council has already done its part by handing over land for public housing, and says only the central State and the Generalitat (the Valencian regional government) have the budget to build it.
That land transfer has a date and numbers. According to elperiodic.com in April 2024, the Plenary Council approved in September 2023 the transfer of the Gerencia and Fusión plots, and the agreement with EVHA was signed in April 2024. The plots are meant for 200 social rental homes: 55 on calle Pavía and 145 on avenida del Barraquer.
The councillor also insists that the Generalitat should declare Sagunto a stressed residential market area, something the municipal plenary session has already demanded twice. His reasoning is that supply is growing, but expectations raised by industrial development should not turn into speculative rent rises. In his view, that declaration is the tool the Housing Law provides to stop unjustified increases and protect local families.
Law 12/2023 on the right to housing sets out when this applies. An area can be declared stressed if the average cost of a mortgage or rent exceeds 30% of average household income, or if purchase or rental prices over the previous five years have risen at least three percentage points above inflation (CPI). The declaration belongs to the authorities responsible for housing, which in the Valencian Community means the Generalitat, not town councils; that is why Sagunto can only request it through plenary resolutions. If granted, it would allow rent-containment measures in new rental contracts.
The municipal information does not include the Generalitat's response to this request. What can be checked soon is whether the 300 expected licences arrive before December.
According to Sagunto City Council and elperiodic.com, with data from the BOE (Spain's official gazette) on Law 12/2023 and from elperiodic.com on the land transfer.