THE two most expensive areas in Spain to buy a property have been revealed in recently-published research – and, surprisingly, neither are in the top five wealthiest towns in the country.
According to estate agency firm Idealista, villas – which make up most of the homes – in the urbanisation La Zagaleta in Benahavís (Málaga province) cost an average of €5.6 million to buy.
This is despite average income on the Costa del Sol being in the bottom third of the country, coming in at €18,000 to €20,000 per household per annum in August 2016, the latest figures released.
The second-most expensive location in Spain to buy a property is the La Moraleja neighbourhood in Alcobendas, about 20 kilometres to the east of Madrid, which is the fourth-wealthiest town in Spain – the average household takes home €50,500 a year.
In La Moreleja, once again, the majority of properties are villas, and average about €5m each – although on the street known as the Camino del Sur, they rise to €5.05m.
Just below €5m, and third-most pricey, are homes on the C/ del Castillo de Aysa, in Madrid city.
Buying a home on Barcelona's Avenida del Tibidabo will set you back an average of €4.83m, Idealista says.
The country's second- and third-wealthiest towns – Majadahonda, to the north of the Greater Madrid region, with an average net annual household income of €56,000, and Sant Cugat del Vallès, where residents earn a typical €53,000 per family unit per year – do not appear in the locations with the top-five most expensive properties.
Yet number five on the list of the most pricey home-buying locations, Pozuelo de Alarcón in the north-west of Madrid – specifically its Paseo de los Lagos, where a property typically costs €4.75m – is in fact the richest town in Spain, with the average household raking in an after-tax annual income of €70,300, not much less than the yearly wage earnt by national president Mariano Rajoy.
As for the rest of the top 10 most expensive house-buying areas, a property on the Avenida Miraflores in Madrid city costs an average of €4.71m; Rocaferrera in Sant Andreu de Llavàneres (Barcelona province) comes in at number seven with homes costing around €4.5m, and the remaining three streets are in La Moraleja again – the Paseo Marquesa Viuda de Aldama (€4.4m); the Camino Ancho (€4.3m), and the Paseo del Conde Gaitanes, at just under €4.3m.
Idealista's study also lists the most expensive streets in each of Spain's 17 autonomously-governed regions – those of Andalucía, Madrid and Catalunya having been mentioned above, the remaining 14 streets or neighbourhoods listed range from a 'mere' €400,000 in Extremadura to just under €3.06m in the Balearics.
Extremadura's most expensive street is the Avenida de las Vaguadas, in Badajoz – a provincial capital city right on the Portuguese border – where homes cost an average of €397,564, whilst for the Balearic Islands, it would normally cost around €3,056,400 for a home on the Avenida Cala Molí in Sant Josep de Talaia, in Ibiza.
Between these extremes, the remaining 12 are not necessarily all in provincial capital cities – in Asturias, the most expensive street to buy a property is in Gijón, the Camino de las Magnolias, with an average price tag of €744,455; in the Canaries, Adeje – on the island of Tenerife – is home to the region's most valuable properties in the Cala Alcojara bay, where they normally go up for sale for about €1,345,500; in the Basque Country – despite San Sebastián having been declared Spain's most expensive city in 2014, this is not true of its property, since thost that cost the most are found on the C/ Amann in Getxo in the province of Vizcaya, of which the capital is Bilbao.
In the region of Valencia, none of the three provincial capitals – Valencia, Alicante or Castellón – are home to the most expensive streets; this honour goes to Altea (Alicante province) where a home on the C/ Alemania will require you to shell out a typical €1.86m.
And in Navarra, the capital, Pamplona, is not where the most expensive home-buying street can be found – this, the Avenida de Egües, is in the town also called Egües, and purchasing a pad here will cost a typical €546,167.
In the remaining seven federal regions, the streets where residential property costs the most are all in provincial capital cities.
For Aragón, this is the urbanisation known as the Colonia San Lamberto in Zaragoza (€1,138,333); in Cantabria, homes are most costly on the Avenida Pérez Galdos in Santander (€1.08m); in Castilla-La Mancha, they are on the main road named the Carretera Navalpino in Toledo (€718,000); and in Castilla y León, in the famously ornate, classical Plaza Mayor of Salamanca, a major tourist attraction as well as home to the region's most valuable residential property at just a few hundred under €670,000.
Turning to Galicia in the far north-west, buyers have to splash out the most on A Coruña's Avenida Linares Rivas (€826,800); in the land-locked northern wine region of La Rioja, the Avenida de Madrid in Logroño is the most costly for purchasing a home (€530,800); whilst in the Region of Murcia, the city of Murcia itself is where the 'real' money changes hands: the main boulevard through the metropolitan area, the Gran Vía Alfonso X el Sabio, is home to properties costing a typical €555,385.
The photograph shows part of the urbanisation La Zagaleta in Benahav&iac
