Buying property in Benahavís.
A white village up the Guadalmina valley, and the estates and golf courses in the hills around it. New homes on file from €395,000 in the village to €11,300,000 in El Madroñal, and an average about 9% under Marbella’s per square metre.
A white village in the hills, and a municipality of estates around it.
Benahavís is a municipality of its own in the hills behind Marbella and San Pedro de Alcántara, 145 square kilometres running from the coast road up into the mountains. The village sits up the Guadalmina valley at 174 metres above the sea, 18 minutes by car from the beach at San Pedro. It is small and white, with shops and restaurants within a walk of the one new development on file inside it, Fuente Lirios.
The other ten developments on file, and all twelve homes listed for sale, are out on the estates and residential areas in the hills around it. El Madroñal is a gated estate of large plots above San Pedro. La Quinta is built around a 27-hole golf course on the Benahavís side of the Golf Valley. La Zagaleta, about 900 hectares with two golf courses for its members, was bought in 1990 and planned for 420 homes, with 230 built by its own count. Los Arqueros is a gated community around a course by Seve Ballesteros, and the Marbella Club Golf Resort is a gated estate with 24-hour security around a course by Dave Thomas. Monte Halcones sits next to the La Quinta course, El Herrojo on the slope above the course, Los Flamingos in the hills between San Pedro and Estepona, and La Alquería four minutes by car from the Atalaya golf club.
The wider Marbella picture →·New builds in Marbella, Benahavís and Istán →·New developments, by price →
What I actually know about Benahavís
- Benahavís averages €5,413/m² on idealista’s 2026 figures, about 9% below the Marbella average of €5,956/m².
- Eleven new developments are on file, with starting prices from €395,000 to €11,300,000 on the developers’ lists in October 2026. Four are finished, five are under construction and two are selling before building starts.
- Twelve higher-value homes are listed for sale on the estates, from €1,650,000 to €10,800,000. Among them are villas for sale in the Marbella Club Golf Resort at €10,700,000 and in Monte Halcones at €10,800,000. A new villa for sale in La Alquería, at €5,250,000, is one of the eleven developments.
- Benahavís had 9,765 registered residents in 2025, 6,044 of them foreign nationals. The British are the largest group, a quarter of the foreign residents. The population grew by 36% in the ten years to 2024.
- In 2025, 688 resale homes and 23 new homes were sold in Benahavís, on the Junta de Andalucía’s statistics.
- The municipality’s golf courses include La Quinta, with 27 holes, Los Arqueros, opened in 1991, the Marbella Club Golf Resort, par 73, and Villa Padierna on the coast road, with three courses of 18 holes. La Zagaleta’s two courses are for its members, and membership is kept for residents, with a few places for others.
- CEIP Daidín is the municipality’s state infant and primary school. Its first years of secondary teaching were withdrawn in 2023, and there is no state secondary school in Benahavís. Creators International School, a British-curriculum school for ages 7 to 18 with boarding, opened here in September 2026, and San Pedro and Nueva Andalucía have three more international schools between them.
- Benahavís has a local clinic of the Andalusian health service. The public hospital for the municipality is the Hospital Universitario Costa del Sol in Marbella, with a 24-hour emergency department.
- From the developments on file, Puerto Banús is 10 to 26 minutes by car and Málaga airport 40 to 71 minutes. The village is 18 minutes from the beach at San Pedro and 22 from Puerto Banús.
9 local facts on file — no brochure talk.
Updated 25 October 2026.
Worth knowing about Benahavís.
The village and the estates are two different lives.
In the village there are shops and restaurants within a walk of home, and Fuente Lirios is the one new development on file there, from €395,000. The estates have the space, the gardens and the views, and they run on the car: from the developments on file, the village is 9 to 22 minutes away. Spend an evening in each before you choose.
The gate is not the same on every estate.
The listings on file describe 24-hour security at El Madroñal and the Marbella Club Golf Resort, 24-hour surveillance at El Herrojo, a guarded private area with a concierge at Señorío de Cifuentes, and gated communities at Los Arqueros, Los Flamingos and Atalaya Fairways. The Monte Halcones and La Alquería listings do not say. Ask who staffs the gate and when, and read what a gated community does and does not give you.
The estate fee pays for the gate.
On the homes whose listings state it, the monthly fee runs from €146 in Los Arqueros to €1,120 for an eight bedroom villa in El Madroñal. It pays for the security and the upkeep of the estate, and it varies from plot to plot. Ask for the last two years of accounts and the minutes of the last meeting, and see how community fees work before you sign.
One new development is run as a hotel.
Azurean Marbella is 133 serviced apartments run under the Destination by Hyatt name, sold furnished from €708,442. The homes hold a tourist rental licence that gives owners 60 nights a year for their own stays and does not allow them to be lived in full time, and VAT is 21% rather than 10%. As a managed holiday base, that is the point. As a home to live in, it is the wrong building.
Above €3.7 million, wealth tax is a running cost.
Andalucía rebates its wealth tax in full, but above €3.7 million of net Spanish wealth per person the national solidarity tax applies, and Andalucía now collects the same sum itself. One owner with a €4 million home and nothing else in Spain pays about €5,100 a year, and the bill rises steeply with the value. Two owners have two allowances, and the wealth tax guide sets out how it is worked.
Asking is not achieved.
The €5,413 is what sellers ask across every kind of home in the municipality, from village apartments to estate villas, so it describes none of them closely. The developers’ prices on this page rarely move, though the parking, the extras and the payment stages often do. Most of what sells here is resale, and there I use the last sales on the same estate as the measure to hold a seller to.
What it costs, and what it costs to hold
Benahavís averages €5,413/m² on idealista’s 2026 figures, against €5,956/m² for Marbella. The new developments on file start at €395,000 for a two bedroom apartment in the village and €499,000 on the Señorío de Cifuentes estate, and run to €11,300,000 for a six bedroom villa in El Madroñal. Per square metre, on the cheapest home in each, they run from €3,851 to €11,569. The twelve homes listed for sale ask from €4,802 to €17,561 per built square metre.
A new build pays 10% VAT and 1.2% stamp duty on top of the price, plus notary, registry and your lawyer, so plan for 12 to 14% in all. A resale pays 7% transfer tax instead, about 10 to 11% in all. Then the annual side: IBI to Benahavís town hall, rubbish collection and the estate or community fee. On the homes whose listings state them, the fees run from €146 to €1,120 a month and IBI from €628 to €5,125 a year.
The Benahavís and Marbella averages are idealista’s 2026 figures, as used on the areas page. Starting prices and €/m² are from the developers’ price lists on file in October 2026, cheapest home in each development. Home prices, fees and IBI are from the listings on file.
What Benahavís costs, development by development and home by home.
Idealista gives one figure for the whole of Benahavís, €5,413/m² in 2026, and the municipality is too varied for one figure to say much. Underneath it are the developers’ own prices, worked per square metre on the cheapest home in each development, and the asking prices of the homes listed for sale over their built areas. Dearest first, with Marbella and Benahavís as a whole for scale.
The Altura 160 and Fuente Lirios lines are the ones I would look at hardest. They are the only new apartments on file priced below the Benahavís average per metre, one on a guarded estate with four shared pools and one in the village itself, and both start under €500,000. At the other end, Villa Aguila and Villa Esencia, two hillside villas with sea views, are about 3.7 to 1 apart per metre. One was renovated in 2022 and the other was built in 1988, and that difference is worth pricing before you set them side by side.
What each rung of the ladder looks like.
These are the starting prices of the eleven new developments on file for Benahavís, from the developers’ own price lists, and the asking prices of the twelve homes listed for sale on its estates, cheapest first.
Developers’ starting prices from the price lists on file in October 2026, and the asking prices of the homes on file. Each one has its own page, under new developments in Marbella, Benahavís and Istán or under Luxury property, with the photos and my read on it. Tell me the rung you are on and I will bring you what is genuinely available on the week you are looking.
Luxury homes for sale in Benahavís.
The higher-value villas and apartments for sale here, with the price, the rooms and the size of each. Every one has its own page with the photographs, the running costs and where it is.
Two questions about new builds in Benahavís
Can you get a garden with a new build in Benahavís?
4 of the 11 developments here have homes with a garden of their own. The cheapest on the developers’ lists is a three-bedroom ground-floor apartment with 32 m² of garden at Solenne, €1,495,000.
What do the two-bedroom new builds in Benahavís come to?
Across the 36 two-bedroom apartments and penthouses on the developers’ current lists, the middle size is about 103 m² built, with a terrace of about 53 m², and the middle price is €665,000. The cheapest is €395,000.
Nearby, and worth a look.
Nueva Andalucía · Aug 2026 €/m²
Marbella’s Golf Valley — three championship courses in one inland bowl, five minutes behind Puerto Banús, and priced above the town it belongs to.
San Pedro · Aug 2026 €/m²
The real town at the western end of Marbella, with a boulevard, a church square, a Thursday market and a beach, seven minutes from Puerto Banús and a quarter cheaper per square metre than the Golf Valley next door.
Nagüeles · Aug 2026 €/m²
The stretch between Marbella town and Puerto Banús: the beach and the grand hotels on the Golden Mile, gated communities and villas on the hill behind, and the highest price per square metre in Marbella.
Río Real · Aug 2026 €/m²
The east side of Marbella, from the beach at Los Monteros, past the public hospital and two golf courses, to the new building on the hill above. Seven new developments, from €458,000.
Looking for a buyer’s agent in Benahavís?
That is what I do. I’m Michael from Lunessa Homes — a British buyer’s agent living in Málaga, fluent in Spanish, working on the buyer’s side of the search. One client at a time, and Benahavís sits inside the stretch of coast I cover, Estepona to Nerja.
- Viewings you don’t have to fly for. I walk Benahavís myself and report back straight — including the places that aren’t worth your trip.
- A price sense you can hold me to. Benahavís · 2026 avg €/m² is €5,413. When an asking price ignores that, I’ll tell you.
- Local, not general. 10–26 min to Puerto Banús by car — the kind of detail that decides a street, and only shows up on the ground.
- The parts that trip people up. The NIE, the lawyer, the bank, the paperwork in Spanish — handled alongside the search, not left to you afterwards.
Two related pages: buying a property to renovate in Benahavís, and selling a home here.
Thinking about Benahavís?
Tell me the rung you’re on and what you’re picturing. If Benahavís isn’t the right fit, you’ll hear that on the first call — and you’ll hear where is.
Thanks for reaching out.
I’ll be in touch shortly — usually the same day.