Property for sale on the New Golden Mile

Three differences, and they matter more than the shared name.

Newer, wider and considerably cheaper

Marbella's avenue was largely built between the nineteen-sixties and the boom and carries some of the dearest rates in Spain. This band was built later, across a far broader strip of ground, and asks a fraction of it for the same floor area. That gap is the entire reason buyers end up here, and it is a rational trade rather than a compromise. The original is at Golden Mile.

Gates instead of streets

The original is an urban address: buildings on an avenue with shops and restaurants at street level. This band is urbanisations — gated communities with gardens and pools, reached by car, on roads that mostly serve the communities themselves. Both have advantages, and the difference is not one of quality.

And a car instead of a promenade

On the Marbella stretch most residents walk to dinner. Here, outside the handful of front-line communities, most drive. Anybody who has decided that walking matters should look either at the sand side of this band or at the town itself, which is at Estepona Old Town.

It is the single most searched phrase for this stretch, which is worth taking seriously — and worth being accurate about.

A garden without a house

A ground-floor flat in a gated community gives you a private terrace and strip of garden, direct access to the pool and lawns, and no stairs, while somebody else maintains everything outside your fence. For families with small children and for owners who no longer want a lift, that combination is the reason the search term exists.

They are an ordinary share of this band rather than a speciality of it

Ground floors turn up on this stretch at about the rate they turn up anywhere on the coast, because almost every gated scheme has a lowest storey and almost every lowest storey was given a garden. The search reflects what buyers want rather than something this band holds in unusual quantity. Anybody told that this stretch specialises in them has been told a sales line.

And where the ground floors on this band actually are

Nearly all of them stand in gated schemes behind the coast road, where the land is flat enough for a strip of lawn and a gate into the communal garden. A ground floor only works where the ground is level, and that is the inland half of this band; on the slopes above it the same storey sits half buried against the hill and the garden is a retaining wall. The wider market is at ground floor apartments.

Four waves of building, and each of them sits in a different part of the band.

The first blocks faced the beach rather than the road

Where the land lies flat between the old road and the water, the earliest schemes went up as two and three storeys with their long sides turned to the sea, on grounds that planning today would not release. The earliest buildings on this band stand furthest apart, so an old block near the sand can feel emptier than a recent one three streets inland. Age here is not the same thing as density.

The golf urbanisations came next, inland of the road

From the eighties onward the slopes behind the coast road were laid out around the courses, in detached houses on wide parcels and low blocks in gardens, reached by streets that lead nowhere except to the next gate. The inland half of this band was planned around fairways rather than around a shoreline, which is why its roads curve and its parcels are generous. That generation holds most of the grown planting on the band.

The boom filled the middle

Between those two, in the years before the financial crisis, came the blocks most people picture when they hear the name: four and five storeys, underground parking, a communal pool, a gym in the larger ones. Most of the floor area on this band was built inside a single decade, which is why so much of it shares the same terraces, the same ceiling heights and the same glazing.

And the newest schemes sit on the leftovers

What has gone up since stands on the parcels the earlier waves skipped — awkward shapes, steeper ground, corners near the motorway junctions. Recent building here occupies the smallest plots and carries the best specification, which is the trade a buyer makes in choosing new over established. Anything still under construction is at new developments.

Two buyers very well, and one who should look at a town.

Families staying the year

Schools, pools inside gates, flat roads, full-sized supermarkets and a population that does not leave in October. For a household relocating with children rather than holidaying, this band is the most practical ground in the municipality, and that shows in which homes sell fastest.

The buyer priced out of Marbella

The same sea, a quarter of an hour further from Puerto Banús, and a figure that buys considerably more house. For a buyer who was looking at the original avenue and found the arithmetic impossible, this is where the search usually ends.

Not the buyer who wants a Spanish town

This band is urbanisations and commercial centres. The square, the market, the church and the lanes are at the far end of the municipality, and they are a drive. That market is at Estepona Pueblo.

Four formats, in very unequal quantities.

Apartments are the body of the band

Flats in gated schemes with gardens, a pool and parking are what this stretch mostly holds, from a small two-bedroom behind the road to a duplex penthouse on the first line. The floor is what sets the price inside any one block: a ground floor brings a garden, a top floor brings a roof terrace, and the storeys between bring neither. The coast-wide segments are at apartments and penthouses.

Townhouses sit in rows behind the road

Terraced and semi-detached houses in small schemes, usually two or three floors with a patio, a roof terrace and a garage underneath, built for families rather than for a fortnight. A townhouse here buys rooms and a private front door without the ground a villa needs, and the shared walls are the reason it costs what it does. They are gathered at townhouses.

Villas stand at both ends of the band

On the slopes they are detached houses on wide parcels with a pool and grown trees; on the sand they are estates behind walls, and the two have almost nothing in common except the word. A villa inland and a villa on the first line are not comparable purchases, so weigh the ground and the position before the floor area. The format is at detached villas.

And building land hardly comes up at all

This band was laid out as complete urbanisations and then filled in, so bare parcels inside it are rare and the few that appear are usually awkward in shape or steep. Land is the format this stretch barely offers, and it is the hills behind that still release parcels. Those are at residential plots, and our estate agents in Estepona know the band gate by gate. New listings reach you through the property alarm.