What is a UBO and why do I need to identify one?

The ultimate beneficial owner (titular real) is the natural person who ultimately owns or controls a company, under Art. 4 Ley 10/2010. As a real estate agent you must identify them, because that same law makes you an obliged entity as soon as a legal entity is party to the transaction.

The law defines the UBO on two levels:

1. The natural person on whose behalf the relationship is established.
2. The natural person who directly or indirectly holds more than 25% of the capital or voting rights — or who otherwise controls the company's management, for example through shareholder agreements, articles of association that decouple voting rights from shareholding, or the power to appoint the majority of the management body (art. 8 RD 304/2014).

This must be settled before establishing the business relationship or carrying out the transaction. The law names neither the reservation contract nor the arras (earnest money agreement) — settling it before those signatures is an internal process rule, not a statutory deadline. It remains sensible, because from that point a financial commitment is already in place and there is little room left to request further documentation.

Legal basis: Ley 10/2010, Art. 4; Real Decreto 304/2014, Art. 8

Practical tip: Resistance rarely comes from a wish to conceal the beneficial owner, but from the client not understanding why an agent needs this before the reservation. That is exactly where it pays to explain the legal basis from the outset — rather than justifying it afterwards, once friction has already built up.