While estate agents all over Malaga province celebrate the fact that house sales are up by 12%, the highest increase since 2008, property website idealista.com names Marbella as one of Spain’s most expensive residential areas. Marbella’s luxury housing sector has so far led the Costa del Sol’s property market back from the brink of disaster, offering the world’s wealthiest property buyers unparalleled value for money in one of the most beautiful urban areas imaginable.
However astonishing it might be though, it is all things considered far cheaper to buy a property in Marbella than renting one. At a whacking 38,950 Euros per month - the average rental cost to rent a home in Calle Alcalá, Las Brisas – Marbella’s rental market is not for the faint hearted.
The average cost of renting a home in this Marbella street was revealed by a recent idealista.com survey, which places the Costa del Sol resort at the top of the national list. Marbella’s rental prices occupy the first, third and fourth positions of this list, rather surprisingly naming Las Brisas, Sierra Blanca and Guadalmina Baja as Marbella’s most expensive places to live as a tenant. Prior to the survey, most people would have assumed Marbella’s famous Golden Mile to be the town’s most expensive rental market.
In second position after Marbella’s Las Brisas is Tibidabo Avenue in Barcelona, according to the survey.
Las Brisas
Las Brisas’ Calle Alcalá lies in the Nueva Andalucía “golf valley, an area with an abundant supply of luxury villas. If you want to rent a ten-bedroom property with at least 1,500 square metres of living space, two presidential suites, separate guest bungalow and cinema, you must be prepared to fork out 118,000 Euros per month rental fees for the privilege.
For such a monthly rental fee tenants get to enjoy La Concha Mountain views from the villa’s 4,000 square metres plot for free and can look forward to walking to their nearest golf course rather than having to drive there. The property is available for short lets only, so tenants shouldn’t get used to the high life. It is properties like this one that have helped idealista.com’s survey to identify an average monthly rental price of 38,950 Euros.
Sierra Blanca
Set on the slopes of La Concha Mountain, which overlooks Marbella, the luxurious Sierra Blanca urbanisation was named in third place in idealista.com’s survey. Here prospective tenants can find some of Marbella’s most expensive rental homes and buyers of property must dig deep to secure their dream home. At an average rental price of 16,300 Euros per month, villa life may be cheaper than it is for Las Brisas' tenants, but considering that a luxury apartment bought second hand can be had for around 600,000 to 750,000 Euros, it seems to make far more sense to purchase a Sierra Blanca home than renting one.
Guadalmina Baja
This is one of Marbella’s most established luxury villa developments. It lies to the west of Marbella, near the picturesque San Pedro resort. Only marginally cheaper to rent than Sierra Blanca, the average villa here can be had for just under 16,300 Euros per month.
The remaining entrants for the idealista.com national survey show two streets in Ibiza and four in Madrid as the most expensive top ten residential Spanish areas to rent in.
Malaga Province fourth most successful by Number of Home Purchases
With 13,519 completed house purchase transactions in the first half of 2016, Malaga Province became Spain’s fourth most successful region. As demand for newly-built homes is slowly picking up again, Malaga province has seen its best house sale activity since 2008 in the first six months of this year. The Spanish housing market all but collapsed at the start of 2008, when the world-wide financial crises trigged a global downturn.
In first position in terms of house sales lies Madrid, followed by Barcelona and Alicante. Compared to last year’s first six months this means that these four regions have experienced an 11.6% increase this year. A recovery of the housing market seems to have been confirmed by these results.
These findings are based on Spain’s official data agency, the INE or Instituto Nacional de Estadística. According to the latest data, their report shows that Malaga saw twice as much sales activity than Seville, the next busy property hot spot in the region.
Seen in terms of property type, 80% of properties sold in Malaga province were resales rather than newly built homes, but many of these were actually new developments, where properties had been repossessed by banks. For official purposes, such properties are classed as “second-hand” rather than new-built.
Taken together, the two surveys seem to provide hard evidence that buying a Marbella holiday home or buy-to-let property is a very good investment indeed!