Apartments for sale in Los Monteros

15 properties for sale in Los Monteros · € 495,000 to € 4,200,000 · median € 9,629/m²

There are 15 apartments for sale in Los Monteros on our books, from € 495,000 to € 4,200,000, with the middle of the list at € 1,300,000, an average interior of 175 square metres, an average terrace of 53 square metres and a median of € 9,629 per square metre. That median is the highest of any apartment market we publish, in any municipality.

And yet the cheapest flat on this page costs under three thousand a square metre. From the bottom of the rate range to the top is a factor of six, which is the widest spread we measure anywhere. One address, two completely different markets, and the line between them is a single row of buildings.

What the front row of the apartments for sale in Los Monteros is paying for

Close to half of this page records a beachfront position and nearly as many record a front-line beach complex. Those are the dearest homes here and the reason the median rate is what it is.

Front line means nothing in front of you

Not a walk to the sand but the sand itself, with no road, no car park and no other building in between. The shoreline is public and the setback is law, so what stands in front of a front-line complex today is what will stand there in fifty years. On a coast where every other attribute can be built, bought or renovated, that one cannot be created at all.

Why this particular beach

Because it is one of the broadest and best-regarded stretches in the municipality, with a long-established beach club and hotel at its centre giving the district a name that predates most of what surrounds it. A front-line flat here is bought by people who have decided on the beach first and the apartment second.

What that costs in practice

The dearest rate on this page runs past sixteen thousand a square metre, which is among the highest figures anywhere in our stock and higher than most of Puerto Banús. Nobody pays that for rooms; they pay it for a position that cannot be reproduced. Everything on the municipal front line is beachfront in Marbella.

What the back of the apartments for sale in Los Monteros is paying for

The other half of this page is a different purchase entirely, and for a great many buyers it is the better one.

One row back, and a sixth of the rate

The least expensive home here is a three-bedroom flat of over a hundred and seventy square metres at a rate under three thousand a metre — more floor area than the median on this page, at a fraction of the median rate. It is not on the sand. It is a few minutes' walk from it, in the same district, with the same beach club down the road.

Why the gap is so violent

Because front line is a binary rather than a gradient. A building either has nothing in front of it or it has something, and there is no halfway position to price. In districts where the front row is a small part of the stock the effect is hidden in the average; here the front row is half the page and the split is impossible to miss.

Which half you should be shopping in

Settle it before you view, because the two will not feel like the same market. If you will swim most days from May to October and the view from the sofa is the point, the premium is money well spent. If you will use the beach a dozen times a year, the back row gives you half again the floor area for a quarter of the rate, and the walk takes four minutes.

What size the apartments for sale in Los Monteros are

Larger than a beach-strip flat usually is, which is worth knowing before the rates frighten you off.

Three bedrooms leads

Over half the page has three bedrooms and most of the rest has two, with a single four-bedroom home. Interiors run from the middle hundreds to well past four hundred square metres at the top, and the median sits comfortably above a hundred and fifty. These were drawn as homes rather than as holiday studios.

Ground floors and middle floors, in equal number

An even split, which is unusual. The ground-floor homes in these schemes open onto the communal gardens between the blocks and the beach, which on a front-line complex is the most valuable position in the building for anyone with children or a dog. They also carry a garden that no rate per square metre counts. See ground floor apartments.

And the terraces are modest for the money

Average terrace area runs to roughly a quarter of the interior, which is a reminder of when most of these blocks were designed: a balcony was a balcony then, and the deep outdoor room arrived a generation later. The exceptions are the newest schemes, where the terraces are considerably more generous and priced accordingly.

What the gardens do on the apartments for sale in Los Monteros

On a front-line complex the communal garden is not landscaping. It is the strip of ground between the building and the beach, and it is doing three jobs at once.

It is the buffer

A planted garden of any depth between a block and the sand absorbs the noise of a busy August beach, keeps the pedestrian traffic off the building and makes the walk down feel like a private path rather than a public one. A front-line scheme with a shallow garden and one with a deep one are different places to live, and the difference does not appear in any figure.

It is most of what the quota pays for

Mature subtropical planting a few metres from salt water needs constant work: irrigation, replacement, pruning and a gardener who knows what survives there. That is the single largest line in the budget of most schemes on this page, ahead of the pool and ahead of the guard, and it is why the quota here looks high next to an inland block of the same size.

And it is the view from the lower floors

More of these flats record a garden view than you might expect on a beach strip, and on the ground and first floors the garden is what you actually look at, with the water above and beyond it. Most people find that the better picture and all people find it the cooler one in August. Walk the garden before you judge the flat.

What to ask about it

Who owns the ground between the garden and the sand. On some schemes it belongs to the community, on others it is public land maintained by the town hall, and on a few the boundary is less clear than anyone admits. It changes what you may plant, what you may fence and who pays when a storm takes the dune away.

A quarter of the apartments for sale in Los Monteros are new building

The rest is resale, and the mixture is what makes this page readable rather than confusing.

Where the new schemes sit

Set back from the front row, on the land behind the established complexes, which is the only ground left here. They enter at a lower absolute price than the front-line resales and a lower rate, with current construction and terraces drawn this decade. For a buyer who wants the district and the newer building rather than the water from the sofa, they are the obvious place to look.

What buying one involves

A contract with stage payments against a bank guarantee rather than a deed signed on one morning, and value added tax plus stamp duty instead of transfer tax. Get the guarantee in writing before the first transfer, and the completion date with the consequence of a delay written in. The whole of our unfinished stock is listed on new developments.

And what the resales give you instead

The position, the mature gardens and a community whose costs are known. In a district where the front row cannot be rebuilt, the old blocks hold something the new ones cannot buy — which is why the dearest homes on this page are also among the oldest.

What the apartments for sale in Los Monteros cost to hold

Three figures that matter more here than in most districts.

The quota on a front-line scheme is not small

Gardens between the building and the sand, a pool, a gate, a guard and in several schemes a staffed reception, all paid for monthly by the owners. Ask for the budget and the reserve fund before you fall for the view. A suspiciously modest quota on a beachside block usually means a bill has been postponed rather than avoided.

What the salt does

Everything metal within sight of the water corrodes faster than it would a kilometre inland: railings, window frames, air conditioning units, pool plant, gate motors. A well-run coastal community budgets for that and shows it. Walk round the outside of the building and look at the railings on the seaward side — a decade of deferred maintenance is visible from the pavement.

And the one question to ask the administrator

Whether any major work has been voted and not yet paid for. On a front-line block of a certain age that is the question that moves money, it is answerable in a morning, and it is the difference between a bargain and a liability. Rental services covers the letting side, which on this beach is the strongest summer trade on the coast.

Where the apartments for sale in Los Monteros sit

This is the start of east Marbella, and the districts either side are a few minutes away and nothing like it.

West, towards the town

The coast tightens and the prices rise into the Golden Mile and Marbella itself. Immediately inland of here is houses in El Rosario, a villa district on the slope above with almost no flats at all, and apartments in Río Real around the golf course between the two.

East, along the shelf

The land widens into apartments in Elviria, several times the size of this market and roughly half the rate per square metre, where the position is good at both beach and golf rather than excellent at one. That comparison is the honest one for anyone weighing the back row here.

And the district as a whole

Mostly houses rather than flats: everything in it together is property for sale in Los Monteros, the municipal flat list is apartments in Marbella, and the coast-wide front line is beachfront property.

Before you offer on apartments for sale in Los Monteros

Three checks, and the first one decides everything else.

Count what is between the building and the water

On a satellite map, in ten seconds. If the answer is a road, a car park or another block, it is a walk and not a front line, whatever the particulars say — and the price should be a back-row price. That single check is worth more than any other on this page, because the gap between the two is sixfold.

Read the community accounts before the kitchen

Quota, reserve fund, last two sets of minutes, approved but unpaid works, and the rule on short letting. On a page where half the stock is old and beside the sea, this is where the real risk sits.

And if the right flat is not listed today

Front-line homes here come up rarely and sell quickly, often before they are advertised. Set the criteria once — front row or back, floor, bedrooms, terrace — and our property alarm writes to you the morning a match appears. Our agents in Estepona cover east Marbella and will have the statutes, the budget and the maintenance history before a viewing trip.

Questions about apartments for sale in Los Monteros