Costa del Sol Market Report in 2026: What Buyers Actually Paid, From the Deeds

Most Costa del Sol market reports tell you what sellers are asking. This one tells you what buyers paid, because every price in it comes from deeds signed before Spanish notaries. It covers ten municipalities, twelve years of history and 205 notarial zones, and it refreshes as the data syncs rather than appearing once a year as a PDF.

How is this report different from other Costa del Sol market reports?

Three structural choices set it apart.

• The price basis. Deeds only, never listing-portal asking prices, which sit above what buyers actually pay and are banned as valuation figures across this site.
• The granularity. A transaction-weighted price for every municipality the notarial series publishes, plus a price for each of 205 individual zones.
• The cadence. The data syncs automatically, so the report refreshes as new figures land rather than annually, with a quarterly tracker episode closing each quarter.

External context from Tinsa, the INE and the Colegio de Registradores is always quoted with its exact product, geography and period, because an appraisal index and a deed-based average are different instruments and should never be blended silently.

What did buyers actually pay in 2026?

Over the 12 months to May 2026, ten Costa del Sol municipalities published a price on the deeds.

Municipality	EUR per built m2	Registered deeds	Average price paid	Average size	Year on year
Marbella	4,665	4,037	EUR 788,970	169 m2	+7.7%
Benahavís	4,529	619	EUR 993,891	219 m2	+9.3%
Fuengirola	3,852	2,132	EUR 383,337	100 m2	+17.2%
Estepona	3,437	3,168	EUR 434,200	126 m2	+11.0%
Torremolinos	3,348	1,735	EUR 297,304	89 m2	+35.9%
Ojén	3,223	167	EUR 500,008	155 m2	+27.9%
Benalmádena	3,134	1,860	EUR 318,161	102 m2	+10.0%
Mijas	2,948	3,150	EUR 365,163	124 m2	+7.0%
Casares	2,690	597	EUR 332,780	124 m2	+9.9%
Manilva	2,481	1,047	EUR 262,684	106 m2	+24.4%
Málaga province	3,061	33,997	EUR 368,679	120 m2	+8.4%

Consejo General del Notariado, rolling 12 months to May 2026. Each price is an average per built square metre across the deeds behind it.

What that table settles

Marbella is the most expensive municipality on the coast, ahead of Benahavís by about EUR 136 per square metre. Benahavís buyers nevertheless pay far more in absolute terms, an average of EUR 993,891, because what they buy is bigger: 219 square metres against Marbella’s 169.

The surprise is Fuengirola in third place at EUR 3,852, ahead of Estepona. It gets there on the smallest homes on the coast, an average of 100 square metres, and the highest new-build share of any covered municipality. A high price per metre and a low price per home are the same market seen from two angles.

The province line is the benchmark that matters. At EUR 3,061 across 33,997 deeds, it shows how far above the provincial average the western coast trades: Marbella carries a 52 per cent premium to its own province. The ten municipalities here account for 18,512 of those deeds, roughly 54 per cent of the province’s registered housing sales.

What “average price per built square metre” means here

It is a mean, calculated over the built (constructed) surface stated on the deed. Not plot area, and not built area plus terrace. It is also not an appraisal: Tinsa’s figures, quoted below for trend, are valuations rather than transactions, which is why the two never match exactly.

Each municipal figure covers a rolling 12-month window ending May 2026. That lags a monthly snapshot, but it is far steadier and rests on thousands of deeds rather than a handful.

How much have Costa del Sol prices risen since 2015?

Twelve years of annual averages, from the same deeds, put the current numbers in proportion.

Annual average EUR per built m2 by municipality, 2015 to 2026 (notarial deeds)

Municipality	2015	2026	Multiple	12-yr CAGR	5-yr CAGR
Marbella	2,214	4,894	2.21×	3.2%	3.7%
Benahavís	1,817	4,895	2.69×	3.4%	4.2%
Fuengirola	1,513	3,927	2.60×	3.8%	4.6%
Estepona	1,580	3,606	2.28×	3.5%	4.3%
Torremolinos	1,241	3,388	2.73×	4.6%	6.9%
Ojén	1,145	2,698	2.36×	3.5%	3.3%
Benalmádena	1,459	3,299	2.26×	3.5%	3.9%
Mijas	1,353	3,140	2.32×	3.3%	3.9%
Casares	1,205	2,906	2.41×	2.9%	2.7%
Manilva	1,035	2,471	2.39×	3.8%	4.6%

Every covered municipality has more than doubled. The ranking of who grew fastest is close to the inverse of who is most expensive.

Torremolinos leads at 2.73 times since 2015, from EUR 1,241 to EUR 3,388, a compound annual rate of 4.6 per cent and the only municipality on the coast above 4 per cent. Benahavís follows at 2.69 times and Fuengirola at 2.60. Marbella, the most expensive, grew slowest of the western towns at 2.21 times, from EUR 2,214 to EUR 4,894, or 3.2 per cent a year.

That pattern matters more than any single year. The cheaper towns have closed ground on the expensive ones across twelve years without overtaking them, so the coast’s price ladder has compressed rather than reordered. A buyer choosing between Marbella and Torremolinos in 2015 faced a 1.8-fold gap; today it is 1.4-fold.

The final year in the chart is a part-year average and will move as deeds register.

Which municipalities are missing, and why

Two absences on this coast are deliberate, and they are different from each other.

Istan has no municipal figure. It is configured upstream and expected in the next extraction, but until the series publishes it there is nothing to show. We hold zone data for it and averaging that would be trivial, but zone data carries no transaction count, so an average built from it would weight a zone that registered three deeds exactly like one that registered three hundred. Where the real figure cannot be computed, the space stays empty and the reason is stated.

San Roque is a different case. It is served as a postcode, Sotogrande, and never as a municipality. The municipality of San Roque extends well beyond the estate into the Campo de Gibraltar belt, whose weight in the sales mix moves on its own, so the postcode and the municipality diverge without warning; they sat about EUR 240 per square metre apart as recently as May. Publishing the Sotogrande postcode figure under a San Roque label would be a false municipal price, so this report treats Sotogrande as what it is: a postcode.

Zone prices for both remain sound for what zone data genuinely supports: ranges, rankings and comparisons between individual zones.

How the coast is priced, zone by zone

Zone figures answer a different question from municipal ones. They cannot be averaged into a municipal price, but they are exactly the right tool for seeing how wide a municipality’s internal market runs and which specific areas sit at its top and bottom.

The spread is the most useful picture here for a buyer. Marbella’s covered zones run from EUR 2,197 per built square metre in Santa Marta to EUR 16,889 in Puente Romano, close to eight times, which is why “the price of Marbella” is a meaningless phrase and the zone decides your budget. Torremolinos and Benalmádena, by contrast, are tight and homogeneous, where the municipality label tells you most of what you need.

Highest-priced notarial zones, July 2026 (average EUR per built m2, notarial deeds)

#	Zone	Municipality	EUR/m2 built	MoM
1	Puente Romano	Marbella	16,889	0.0%
2	Las Lomas de Río Verde Beach	Marbella	9,730	0.0%
3	Casablanca	Marbella	9,474	0.0%
4	Cascada de Camojan	Marbella	9,280	0.0%
5	Punta Plata	Estepona	8,030	0.0%
6	El Rosario-Ricmar	Marbella	7,130	0.0%
7	Las Chapas - El Rosario	Marbella	7,036	0.0%
8	Las Lomas de Río Verde Alto	Marbella	6,806	0.0%
9	La Zagaleta	Benahavís	6,483	0.0%
10	Marbella Golden Mile	Marbella	6,343	0.0%
11	Playa de la Fontanilla	Marbella	6,249	0.0%
12	El Madroñal	Benahavís	6,231	0.0%

The prime table is Marbella-dominated by construction, led by Puente Romano on the Golden Mile. For what those numbers buy and who pays them, the Marbella market report works through the municipality zone by zone, and the villas by budget guide translates them into actual property.

Lowest-priced notarial zones, July 2026 (average EUR per built m2, notarial deeds)

#	Zone	Municipality	EUR/m2 built	MoM
1	Taraguilla-Zona Estación	San Roque	915	0.0%
2	San Enrique - Guadiaro - Pueblo Nuevo	San Roque	965	0.0%
3	Puente Mayorga-Campamento	San Roque	1,026	0.0%
4	Casares Pueblo	Casares	1,199	0.0%
5	Haza del Algarrobo - Las Lomas	Mijas	1,531	0.0%
6	Manilva Pueblo	Manilva	1,928	0.0%
7	El Pinar - Palacio de Congresos	Torremolinos	2,009	0.0%
8	La Mairena	Ojén	2,147	0.0%
9	Santa Marta	Marbella	2,197	n/a
10	Cerros del Águila	Mijas	2,226	0.0%
11	Plaza de Toros	Marbella	2,289	0.0%
12	Sierra Blanca Country Club	Istán	2,294	0.0%

The value table is the more useful surprise. The coast’s lowest prices are not in the obvious resort towns but in San Roque’s service villages inland of the Sotogrande estate, and in inland Mijas and Casares. The practical lesson is that the value end of a prestigious municipality often beats the headline end of a cheap one; the Mijas and Fuengirola value guide and the best areas to live guide work through those trade-offs by lifestyle rather than price alone.

Who is actually buying on the Costa del Sol?

The deeds record who signed as well as what they paid, and the composition is what makes this coast structurally unlike the rest of Spain.

Who is buying, the 12 months to May 2026 (share of registered purchases, notarial deeds)

Municipality	Foreign buyers	Leading nationalities	Bought by a company	New build	Detached home
Benahavís	84.9%	United Kingdom 13.5%, Sweden 10.3%, Netherlands 9.4%	24.0%	5.7%	26.0%
Ojén	71.3%	Germany 22.6%, Netherlands 14.5%, Belgium 11.3%	6.6%	15.0%	22.8%
Estepona	68.9%	Netherlands 15.2%, United Kingdom 13.1%, Poland 11.2%	13.9%	25.4%	14.4%
Manilva	67.4%	United Kingdom 20.7%, Belgium 9.8%, Poland 9.3%	12.9%	10.4%	18.3%
Casares	66.9%	United Kingdom 17.4%, Belgium 14.0%, Netherlands 14.0%	19.6%	15.4%	25.1%
Mijas	65.3%	United Kingdom 18.1%, Netherlands 12.7%, Poland 6.7%	11.4%	17.9%	18.1%
Marbella	60.9%	United Kingdom 11.6%, Sweden 9.0%, Netherlands 9.0%	25.1%	11.5%	19.2%
Fuengirola	56.5%	Sweden 11.7%, Netherlands 10.4%, Poland 9.6%	14.9%	31.8%	8.7%
Benalmádena	48.6%	Italy 10.7%, Netherlands 10.7%, United Kingdom 7.2%	12.6%	10.5%	11.4%
Torremolinos	33.4%	Netherlands 19.4%, Italy 7.8%, United Kingdom 6.7%	20.5%	18.7%	4.7%

Three readings of that table are worth spelling out.

Foreign share tracks the hills, not the coastline. Benahavís is 85 per cent foreign and Ojén 71 per cent, while Torremolinos, the most urban and most Spanish of the ten, is 33 per cent. The province as a whole is 42 per cent. The inland golf municipalities are the international market; the seafront towns are mixed.

A quarter of Marbella is bought by a company. Corporate purchases run at 25 per cent in Marbella and 24 per cent in Benahavís, against 7 per cent in Ojén and 11 per cent in Mijas. That is the prime segment’s ownership structure showing up in the statistics, and it carries real tax consequences: the non-resident property holding taxes guide covers the difference.

New build is a Fuengirola and Estepona story. Nearly a third of Fuengirola purchases and a quarter of Estepona ones are new build, against 6 per cent in Benahavís, where buyers are mostly acquiring existing villas. Benahavís is simultaneously the most international and the least new-build municipality on the coast.

For what all of this means when you transact, the Costa del Sol buying guide and selling guide carry the process detail.

How does the Costa del Sol compare with the wider Spanish market?

Every official series points the same direction, faster here than nationally.

What the external indices show

Tinsa’s IMIE General and Grandes Mercados for June 2026, published 14 July 2026, recorded 15.6 per cent year-on-year growth and 1.4 per cent monthly, with Mediterranean coast markets at 17.2 per cent, metropolitan areas at 17.3 per cent and island territories at 18.7 per cent. In nominal terms the index surpassed the 2007 bubble peak by 0.5 per cent, though in real terms Spanish house prices remain 32 per cent below it.

The IMIE Mercados Locales for Q2 2026, published 30 June 2026, puts Málaga province at EUR 2,703 per square metre in appraised value, up 15.05 per cent year on year against 15.2 per cent nationally, with the municipality of Marbella rising 18.31 per cent to EUR 3,694 and Málaga capital up 14.70 per cent. The INE Housing Price Index, transaction-based, recorded 12.9 per cent national growth in Q1 2026 and 13.3 per cent for Andalusia, with resale prices (up 13.5 per cent) outpacing new build (up 9.1 per cent). The Colegio de Registradores put the national registered average at EUR 2,429 per square metre and Málaga province at EUR 3,339.

Why the numbers differ from each other

Note the deliberate labelling. Tinsa reports appraised values, the INE publishes a transaction index, the Registradores publish registered averages, and this report’s own municipal figures are averages per built square metre from the deeds. They move together and measure differently.

The clearest illustration is growth: Tinsa has Marbella up 18.31 per cent while the deeds have it up 7.7 per cent for the year to May 2026. Neither is wrong; they are different instruments over different windows, and quoting one as the other is how most market commentary goes astray. Note too that the Registradores’ provincial figure of EUR 3,339 sits close to our own EUR 3,061, as two registry-derived measures of the same market should.

The Costa del Sol against other Spanish provinces

The same notarial series covers the country’s other prime markets, on the same basis and the same window. Over the 12 months to May 2026 it puts Illes Balears at EUR 4,172 per built square metre, Madrid province at EUR 3,631, Barcelona province at EUR 2,789 and Alicante province at EUR 1,994.

Marbella alone, at EUR 4,665, prices above every one of them, including the Balearics. Málaga province as a whole, at EUR 3,061, sits between Madrid and Barcelona. The prime Costa del Sol is a national outlier; the province around it is not.

Transactions and buyers: what the volume data shows

Activity and prices are diverging in 2026, and the gap widened in May.

The national picture

The Consejo General del Notariado, publishing on 30 July 2026, recorded 55,761 Spanish housing sales in May 2026, down 11.8 per cent year on year, the steepest decline of the year so far. Apartment transactions fell 14.1 per cent to 41,211, while single-family homes fell 4.7 per cent to 14,550. The national notarial price rose 8.8 per cent to EUR 2,049 per square metre, with apartments up 14 per cent to EUR 2,455 and single-family homes up 2.7 per cent to EUR 1,445. Andalusia posted the joint third-highest regional price increase at 14.4 per cent.

The INE’s registry-based figure tells the same volume story at a slightly different cut: 56,462 registered housing sales in May 2026, down 7.3 per cent year on year, the fifth consecutive monthly decline, and only two regions grew: Extremadura at plus 2.6 per cent and Andalusia at plus 2.2 per cent. Málaga province logged 8,714 registered purchases in Q1 2026.

The local scale

Our own municipal counts add the local scale: 4,037 deeds in Marbella over the year to May 2026, 3,168 in Estepona and 3,150 in Mijas, against 619 in Benahavís and 167 in Ojén. Benahavís and Ojén are small, high-value markets rather than busy ones, which is worth remembering whenever their prices are compared with Marbella’s, because a thin market moves further on fewer sales, and Ojén’s 27.9 per cent annual rise rests on 167 deeds.

What are financing conditions doing to the market?

Money is no longer tightening, and that shows in the price series. The 12-month Euribor, the reference for most Spanish variable mortgages, averaged 2.798 per cent in June 2026 (the official Banco de España reference published in the BOE on 2 July 2026), and the Banco de España puts the average rate on new residential mortgage lending at 2.9 per cent in May 2026, in line with the 2025 average of 2.8 per cent.

The Notariado’s May 2026 release shows 54.8 per cent of purchases were financed and the average loan covered 72.5 per cent of price, confirming that stable money at those levels supports the domestic side of demand. The foreign prime segment, which skews cash and which the buyer-mix table above shows dominating Benahavís and Ojén, is less rate-sensitive either way. For the practical borrowing picture, LTV bands and lender terms, see the non-resident mortgage guide.

The Golden Triangle and Marbella, in focus

Two sibling reports carry the depth this coast-wide view deliberately summarises. The Golden Triangle market report covers Marbella, Benahavís and Estepona as one interlocking market, where the coast’s price formation actually happens: the triangle holds the entire top of the prime table above. The Marbella market report goes a level deeper into the municipality’s covered zones and postcodes. Both update on the same cycle as this page, and the Golden Triangle explainer covers the concept behind the geography.

Update cadence, editions and methodology

This is a living report. The data syncs automatically and the prose is refreshed on the same cycle, with the updated date above moving accordingly. The quarterly tracker closes each quarter as a dated episode when Tinsa, the INE and the Registradores publish, and a dated annual edition will archive each full year while this URL stays current.

On method, in one paragraph: municipal prices are averages per built square metre from notarial deeds over a rolling 12 months to May 2026, published by the Consejo General del Notariado for the municipalities named above; annual history covers 2015 to 2026 on the same basis, with the final year a part-year average; zone prices are averages per built square metre from the same source at the July 2026 file, used only for ranges, rankings and per-zone comparison and never aggregated into a municipal average, because the zone data carries no transaction count; where a municipality has no published municipal figure, none is shown; null metrics print n/a, never an estimate; external series are labelled with product, geography and period. Asking prices appear nowhere in this report as figures.