Property for sale in Costalita

Costalita is the beachside strip on the coast side of the motorway between Benamara and the Casares boundary, and its apartments carry the highest figure per square metre of any district on the New Golden Mile — by a wide margin, and higher than anything in the municipality outside Estepona town itself. There are 34 properties for sale in Costalita at the moment, from € 399,000 to € 3,500,000, with the middle of the list at € 848,000, an average built area of 200 square metres and an average plot of 636 square metres. A walk out of the gate and onto the sand is the whole of the premium here, and every other figure on this page follows from it.

A price per square metre tells you what an address is worth in a way that asking prices never do. A district of large villas will always show high prices; a district where each metre is dear is one where people are paying for where the metre sits. Costalita is the second kind, and on this stretch of coast it is the clearest example there is.

Why the flats cost what they do

Because a good share of this district sits as close to the water as Spanish planning law allows anything to sit. The quantity of ground between the coast road and the sand is fixed and none of it is being made, and this strip holds an unusual amount of it for a municipality of this length. That scarcity is physical rather than commercial, which is why it has survived every turn of the market since the front line was drawn.

The reversal nobody expects

Here is the part that surprises people who know this coast: in Costalita the apartments cost considerably more per square metre than the houses do. Everywhere else the opposite holds — a detached house is the dearer metre. The market here prices the position rather than the roof. The flats are the buildings on the front line; the houses sit behind them, further from the water, and the arithmetic turns over accordingly.

What that means if you are choosing

That a house here is, in square-metre terms, the value buy of the district — more floor area, a private plot and a pool for a figure per metre closer to the municipal average. And that a front-line flat is the thing people are actually competing for. Decide which of the two you want before you start, because the page reads very differently depending on the answer.

Between two boundaries

The strip runs west from Benamara to where Estepona's territory ends, with the motorway above it and the sea below. Estepona old town is about ten minutes west and Puerto Banús a quarter of an hour east. It is a thin district with nothing passing through it, which is a large part of its appeal.

The golf above the road

Immediately inland the New Golden Mile's golf districts begin — Atalaya, El Paraíso and Cancelada — where the same budget stretches to noticeably more floor area and the sand turns into a short drive. Anybody weighing a front-line flat should look at one of those on the same day. The trade is real and it is not obvious which way round it should go.

Westward, where the figures fall

Past the municipal boundary the coast continues through Punta Plata and Playa Bahía Dorada toward Casares Playa, and the price per metre drops the whole way west of here. If the figure is the obstacle rather than the position, that is the direction to drive. Every front-line listing we hold between Marbella and the Gibraltar border sits on one page at beachfront property.

The promenade is the spine of the strip

A walkway runs behind the sand for much of the district, linking one beach to the next without ever touching the coast road, and it carries runners in the early morning and families in the evening. The promenade is what turns a row of urbanisations into a neighbourhood: it is the only route here that everybody uses, it is flat the whole way, and it reaches further west every time the coastal path is extended.

Three rows, and the row decides the price

The strip is only a few hundred metres deep and it divides into three bands. The first row opens onto the sand or onto the walkway behind it. The second sits one street back, with a roof or a garden between it and the water. The third lies against the service road under the motorway. Each row back costs noticeably less per square metre than the one in front of it, and the three are close enough to walk between in a quarter of an hour.

Which way the terrace faces, and what that is worth

The coast runs roughly east to west here, so the seaward terraces look south and hold sun from the middle of the morning until it goes down over Gibraltar. A south-facing terrace on this coast is in use eleven months of the year, and a west-facing one adds the evening and loses the middle of the day. The sea breeze arrives in the early afternoon and is the reason the older schemes planted tall trees along their seaward boundary.

The beaches themselves, and what divides them

Sand rather than shingle, in bays separated by low rock groynes and by the mouths of two seasonal streams that run off the Sierra Bermeja behind. The groynes are why the sand here survives a winter instead of moving east with the current, and they are also why each beach in the district feels enclosed rather than endless. Behind the sand there is a thin planted dune strip in places, fenced off and signposted.

Walking distances, written out

From a front-line scheme the water is a matter of a minute or two and the promenade is immediate. From the second row it is a short walk with one road to cross; from the third, a walk of around ten minutes with the crossing under the motorway. Everything else here is a drive rather than a walk — the supermarkets, the schools and the restaurants of the golf districts all sit above the road.

The gardens are communal, and that shapes the schemes

Almost everything on this strip was laid out as a scheme with grounds rather than as a row of buildings: lawn, mature planting, a pool set away from the blocks, and a gate. Thirty years of growth is what separates these grounds from a new urbanisation, and it is the one feature of a nineties scheme that a recent one cannot match at any price. The planting also does the work of a wall between the terraces and the walkway.

Letting, and why the summer fills itself

A walk to the sand fills July and August at the top of the market with no effort at all, and a front-line terrace is the single most effective photograph in a holiday listing. The letting season on a beach strip is shorter and denser than on a golf hillside, which is the trade against the districts above the road. Our rental service handles the calendar and the changeovers and quotes net of management.

Resale

The strip is finished, bounded by a motorway and the sea, and the quantity of front-line ground in it will never increase. Position and aspect are what the next buyer will pay for, and a kitchen is replaceable. That is as durable a resale argument as this coast offers, and it is why the good ones here change hands quietly.