Prime Locations

Almost all foreign property buyers in Spain start out as tourists. In many cases, they will make repeated visits over the years, often to the same region and at the same time of year, most likely a school holiday. So when it comes time to start planning for the property purchase they promised themselves, either as a second or full-time home, do they stick with what they know or spread the net wider? Will the locations that worked well for family sun and sand holidays with young children in tow be the right choice now? It’s completely understandable for tourists on holiday to value familiarity, but investing in property requires objectivity, which may lead to different decisions. The fact is that over the years, clients of The Property Finders, who thought they knew the area they were looking in rather well, have bought properties in places they had never visited or even heard of until we suggested them. And we focus on prime locations, giving our clients the benefit of our in-depth knowledge of locations and years of experience. 

Overseas buyers make up approximately 20% of Spain’s property market. But when the question is where foreigners buy, the answer is very different and not spread evenly throughout the country. Turns out, a big majority head for the Med.  Spain is divided into seventeen autonomous regions, but only five have Mediterranean coastlines: Cataluña, the Valencia Community, Murcia, Andalucía, and the Balearic Islands, and they dominate the overseas sector. In fact, when the statistics for the overseas buyer sector are unpicked, we are really only looking at six regions. The five with Mediterranean coastlines are where 73% of overseas buyers invest, and if the Canary Islands are added to the mix, that rises to over 80%.

The Lure of the Mediterranean

The pull of the Mediterranean shows up even more clearly in the case of those autonomous regions with some coastal provinces and some inland.  Andalucía is a good example of this; four of its eight provinces have Mediterranean coastline and four do not. The four Mediterranean coastal provinces, Almería, Granada, Málaga, and Cádiz, accounted for 72% of the 30,000 foreign purchasers in the region in 2025.  And Málaga province is way ahead of the other three, the choice of 45% of Andalucía’s 2025 overseas buyers. And while 34,104 foreign buyers represented 37% market share in the Valencian Community as a whole, in just one province, Alicante, overseas buyers were more than half the market, at 51.8%. 

And it’s a similar story in Cataluña, with the three provinces with Mediterranean coastline—Barcelona, Tarragona, and Girona—dominating the overseas market with 95% of foreign buyers. Of the 21,400 foreign buyers in 2025, only 960 bought in the inland province of Lleida. In Málaga province, which really means the Costa del Sol, foreign market share was 42.9%, just ahead of the Balearics where it represented 38%. So, somewhere on the mainland Mediterranean coastline or in one of the islands is the choice of a large majority of overseas buyers in Spain. But can it all be classified as a prime location? I don’t think so, and I advise potential purchasers to focus 100% on getting the location right first before thinking about specific properties. 

What defines prime locations and sets them apart from secondary ones? In my experience, prime is defined less by aesthetics and more by structural factors:

• Easy access to an airport with year-round connections worldwide. 
• Well away from high-density, mass tourism destinations with a high concentration of all-inclusive package tourism.
• A genuine 12-month season.  In the Mediterranean that means the best climate and the best golf. Without these two factors, much of the Med goes very quiet in winter. 
• Quality amenities: department stores, supermarkets, shops, restaurants, bars nearby.
• Quality sports facilities nearby, including world-class golf courses.

The Where Defines the What

Once you know the where, the what is defined predominantly by the available budget, and it can happen that a buyer has to make some compromises about their property criteria to get into a prime area. For example, in the post-Covid surge, I worked on several cases in which clients opted to downgrade their expectations for a detached villa and bought townhouses, nearly detached or semi-detached, just so they could buy in one of the very best areas. The right decision in my view. And there’s also a sound economic reason for not compromising on the location. 

The difference between prime and secondary locations becomes most visible during downturns. In the aftermath of the 2008 property crash in Spain, prices in the 5* prime locations fell last, fell less, and recovered sooner than secondary locations. In the best areas, prices hit bottom with a 35% - 40% fall by the end of 2013. However, in the first quarter of 2014, Marbella, thanks to high-spending, non-resident foreign buyers, was the first municipality on Spain’s Mediterranean coastline to register price rises. In the worst-hit areas, away from prime locations, price falls levelled off around 65% - 70% down in 2016.

As in all property booms, prices had ‘rippled’ out from the centre and infiltrated areas that weren’t really prime but benefitted from being ‘close enough’. A lot of the property in those areas was new and, with the addition of premiums for new builds, prices outstripped those of resale properties in prime locations. The attraction of ‘shiny and new’ can be irresistible for many overseas buyers, and, as I discussed in this blog, the same trend is visible in the current market. Repeat after me: prime location first, property second. 

©Barbara Wood

For more property market information please take a look at our Markets Reports. These cover the overall market and the regions we cover.  Go to our Locations page for more detailed information.