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BUYING a new home – to live in, as a holiday bolthole, or an investment – normally means having to stick to a budget, and the breadth of your choice of bricks and mortar is usually dictated by the size of either your bank account or what said bank is willing to lend you.
Usually. Not always. Some of you reading this might be in the fortunate position of being able to buy exactly what you want, because cost is no issue.
And if that's the case, you can afford to splash out on true luxury...so why not?
Where can you find it, though?
Spain's National Institute of Statistics (INE) has compiled a list of the top 10 most expensive streets in the country for residential property purchase, and also the number one most pricey for each of the nation's 15 regions on the mainland and the two encompassing the islands.
It could be you already own a home on one of them – maybe you even bought it years or decades ago with the biggest mortgage you could get a bank to lend you, and had no idea just how much it had earned in equity since; if you're looking to sell, you could use the proceeds for several ultra-high end properties in another location, hopping between them as the mood takes you, or keeping them as a nest-egg.
And it turns out that Spain's most expensive area for buying a home is also the most pricey in the whole of Europe.
Here's where to look if nothing but the most élite will do.
Benahavís (Málaga province)
Although the INE data cover individual streets, the number one most expensive in Spain is, actually, an entire urbanisation. It's in Benahavís, on the Costa del Sol, a town which appears twice in the top 10.
La Zagaleta is at the peak of luxury property in Spain – any home on this residential complex will have an average price tag of just under €10 million.
More precisely, buying a villa here will set you back a mean figure of €9,956,525.
But that's only the average price. Here, you can easily spend up to €34m on a home if you've got it.
Benahavís also comes in at number five for the most costly homes in Spain in 2022 – if you buy one on the A-397 urbanisation, you'll be spending an average of €7,016,897.
Calvià (Mallorca)
Although the most exclusive properties in the Balearic Islands always seem to be in Ibiza, the largest of the region's four inhabited enclaves, Mallorca, is where you'll find four of the 10 most expensive home-buying streets – two of which are in Calvià.
The coastal areas of this small town a short few kilometres inland include Magaluf and Palmanova, which might not have struck you as 'élite', but which are frequently popular with holidaymakers not seeking to drink themselves silly at the clubs on the Punta Ballena strip: Hotel rooms and tourist lets are normally cheap in or out of season and, as they're well connected by bus and good driving roads, means you can spend less on your accommodation and more cash exploring the rest of this beautiful island and its unusual attractions.
If you don't need to worry about saving money, though, you can tour the Cova del Drach's underwater lakes, the Cova del Ham, the artists' colony of Deià, the monastery town of Valldemossa – where French novelist George Sands famously spent a winter with Polish composer Frédéric Chopin – from a base of pure luxury.
This you'll find on the C/ Sant Carles, Calvià's most expensive street and Spain's second-most expensive, with an average residential property price of €9,450,000.
Or if you want a bit of your cash left over for that island exploring, a cheaper option is Spain's seventh-most expensive street – the Avenida Portals Vells, the second-priciest in Calvià, with a typical home costing €6,772,931.
La Moraleja, Alcobendas (Greater Madrid region)
In most countries, the homes with the highest price tag tend to be in the capital cities; this is largely true for Spain, too, although in terms of absolute élite, it's the wider region where you'll find the biggest-budget properties.
Spanish cities have a tendency to just 'stop' once you're outside the boundaries – you don't normally get another 20 or 30 kilometres of urban sprawl, motorways, industrial estates, railway lines and factories. From the motorway heading into the largest metropolitan area in Spain, for example, you pass a sign reading, 'Madrid – 5km', when you're still in wide-open countryside with no apparent civilisation anywhere around you except that neat hub of bright lights on the distant horizon.
So although it would sound odd if you told someone you went skiing in the mountains of Paris or London, or for a country walk in a remote village within the wider regions of either, this is exactly what you can do in Madrid. You can live in the heart of a capital and spend your days lost in green, rural depths, visiting small hamlets with working farms, without having to travel beyond the borders of your relatively-small county.
Despite Madrid's fairly low population density – it's only 29th in Europe for inhabitants per square kilometre – and similarly low air-pollution levels, if being within comfortable commuting distance of a city to benefit from its facilities and features is crucial to you but you're not a fan of the urban frenzy that comes with a country capital, the region is home to numerous satellite towns, large enough to be self-reliant, but just minutes away from central Madrid on the metro or by car.
One of these is Alcobendas, where the La Moraleja urbanisation is home to the third-, fourth- and sixth-most expensive home-buying streets in Spain.
If you buy a property on the C/ del Camino del Sur, you'll be shelling out an average of €8,435,000.
Or, on the Camino del Golf, at number four in Spain, €7,112,500.
To get change out of €7m but still be in sumptuous surroundings, number six in the country is the Paseo de la Marquesa Viuda Aldama, a boulevard where homes come in at a mean figure of €6,926,923.
When we say 'change' out of €7m, it's not exactly a few cents, either: You'll have €73,077 in your back pocket for bills and supermarket shopping.
Andratx and Palma (Mallorca)
Back to the Balearic Islands, and once again, not Ibiza, despite its celebrity fame (it's not difficult to bump into sports personalities, music and film artists, and world-famous tycoons hanging out around Ibiza yacht marinas, mooring there for their holidays).
We're in Mallorca again, firstly in a small town surrounded by breathtaking countryside – Andratx's C/ Pagell is the eighth-most expensive street in Spain, where an average home will cost you €6,683,056 – and, secondly, in the region's capital.
Palma's huge, iconic cathedral, the lively waterfront, narrow lanes drenched in history, excellent shopping, and great beaches make the city a magnet for visitors to Mallorca in general, the main urban activity hub for residents anywhere on the island, and a much-loved tourism destination in itself – as well as being a very well-connected convergence point for public transport to anywhere else in Mallorca.
Homeowners and holiday-home buyers are willing to pay a little more to have all this on their doorstep – and, for those looking for the best with no budget limit, the C/ Binicaubell is Spain's ninth-most expensive street for property purchases.
Here, you're looking at an average price tag of €6,554,000.
Pozuelo de Alarcón (Greater Madrid region)
Statistically Spain's wealthiest town by average per-head income year after year, home to approximately 87,500 inhabitants, Pozuelo is where you'll find Spanish celebrities outside of 'yacht season'. Gated urbanisations with spacious villas, their own pools, and privacy guaranteed, as well as being within easy, quick reach of Madrid city makes it popular with those who need to get to TV and radio studios, football clubs and government headquarters – in particular its luxury residential complex, La Finca.
Not so much an international celebrity hotbed, La Finca is more the location of choice for high-ranking Spanish figureheads.
Sports stars who have lived there, or still do, include David Villa, Fernando Torres and, whilst he was still playing for Real Madrid FC, Portuguese team captain Cristiano Ronaldo and his Spanish wife, Georgina Rodríguez.
Retired Spanish national team captain and Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas lived there with his ex-wife, TV and radio sports reporter and fashion designer Sara Carbonero; after five years in Portugal, they are back there now, but in separate properties.
Still, they are close friends and raise their two little boys together as a united front, so they are often seen together in Pozuelo.
Silver-screen actress Paz Vega, pop chart legend and The Voice Kids judge Alejandro Sanz, as well as several politicians have also lived in La Finca.
Unsurprisingly, given its high net-worth population, Pozuelo de Alarcón is, on average, one of the towns in Spain with the youngest average age and highest birth rate; if you can afford a villa in La Finca, you can also afford to have as many children as you want and, if you're a couple, one of you can probably afford to give up work for several years to care for them full-time.
Although, in terms of neighbourhoods rather than towns or streets, the top four with the highest incomes per head are in Madrid city – El Viso, the business boulevard known as the Paseo de la Castellana, Piovera and Recoletos – and the urban district widely considered to be the 'most posh' is the Salamanca neighbourhood in Madrid, the tenth-most expensive street in the country is the bit known as La Finca, or the Paseo de los Lagos.
Living on this leafy avenue will involve shelling out an average of €6,226,159 for your home.
Most expensive by region: Over €1m
Outside of the three regions with streets in the top 10 for highest home prices – Andalucía, the Balearic Islands and Madrid – the most expensive street in six other regions range from €1.3m to just under €5m.
In the far north-eastern region of Catalunya, occupying the top third of the Mediterranean seaboard up to the French border, you might expect the most expensive street to be in Spain's second-largest city, Barcelona – but it's not.
It is, however, in the wider province of Barcelona, in the town of Sant Andreu de Llavaneres – if you buy a home on the Avenida Supermaresme, be prepared to part with an average of €4,702,846.
Farther south down the same coast, many would have expected the most expensive street to be in Valencia city, or one of its satellite towns – indeed, the wealthiest over the past few years have included San Antonio de Benagéber, Bétera, Alboraia, Rocafort, Almussafes, and Xàtiva; the most expensive towns for home-buying in the same province include Torrent, Paterna and Valencia itself – but the street with the highest prices for homes is in the northern Alicante-province coastal town of Jávea.
It's in fact the town with the most expensive homes, on average, in the entire region – at €721,000 – and the province of Alicante is where you find the biggest price tags: North of Alicante city and on the Costa Blanca, Altea (€605,163), Calpe (€459,353), l'Alfàs del Pi (€405,245) Dénia, Jávea's northern neighbour (€342,158), and El Campello (€310,475) exceed Paterna's €241,003 as the most expensive town in the province of Valencia, or Castellón city (€141,942) and the beach town of Oropesa del Mar (€124,289) in the province of Castellón.
Other towns in the 'most expensive' list in the province of Alicante, other than Benidorm (€218,047), are south of the city: Orihuela (€256,417), Guardamar del Segura (€178,578), Elche (€164,071), Santa Pola (€144,227), Torrevieja (€142,545), and Alicante city itself (€208,864).
Of course, the averages are skewed sharply by some areas having extra-high prices; it's usually possible to find property at a much more typical 'ordinary worker salary' budget in all these towns, if you look in the right places. The higher prices tend to be on the outskirts of towns, or close to the beach, whilst much lower prices can be found in the main hub of towns.
Back to that expensive street in Jávea: It's the one with the 12th-highest property prices anywhere in Spain, at an average of €3,407,917, but the location and views are worth it if you can stretch to it. The C/ Franz Joseph Haydn looks out across pine forest and cliffs, close to the Cap Negre and Punta Plana lookout points, right above the sea; a few streets to the south is the Cabo de la Nao lighthouse and, farther on, the Granadella bay, among the most beautiful (and frequently Instagrammed) in Spain; to the north is the picturesque, secluded Portitxol bay – one of Jávea's best-loved beaches.
You'll also have little trouble explaining where you live to people elsewhere in the world who've never heard of it – this part of Jávea is right on the 'pointy bit' on the right-hand side of the map of Spain.
Curiously, other than very small sections of the north of Castellón, Barcelona and Girona provinces, it's the only part of mainland Spain that's in the correct time zone. Inland of the 'point' is the Meridian Line, the eastern limit of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), despite Spain's being on Central European Time, or an hour ahead of its natural geographical 'clock'.
Still over the €3m threshold is C/ Alcojora in Adeje, Tenerife, the most expensive street in the Canary Islands, with an average price of €3,328,378.
After this, homes in the most-pricey streets per region drop into the €1m territory.
If you're a regular reader of ours, you might have noticed how homes on the top-priced streets in six of Spain's regions are outside the budget of our reigning monarch – indeed, the whole of the top 14 streets are – given that he is, probably officially, the poorest Royal leader in Europe; if it's over €2.57m, King Felipe VI can't afford it.
But he can still grab a house or apartment on the most expensive streets in 11 regions – if he ever decided to invest in a home; Spain's King does not own any property.
For €1,754,643, you can pick up a property on San Sebastián's C/ Zubieta – and be in the right place to enjoy the city's famous film festival and La Concha beach, one of the most-frequented in the Basque Country.
If you can afford €1,612,500 for a house, you can buy one on the C/ Arquitecto Antonio Cominges in the coastal town of Vigo, Pontevedra province, in the far north-western region of Galicia; and for €1,394,615, in the stately northern seaside city and surfers' paradise of Santander, Cantabria, on its C/ Castelar.
The cheapest most expensive streets
In some regions in Spain, though, you can earn bragging rights for living on the most élite street without paying much more for a home than the national average.
From the bottom up, the most expensive street in the whole of the huge central region of Castilla-La Mancha is in the city of Albacete, capital of the province of the same name directly west of that of Alicante – on the Avenida de España, the average residential property comes in at €339,423.
This gives you a clue as to what home prices in general are like in Castilla-La Mancha, a beautiful and vast region of huge contrasts, with good transport links to Madrid, historic cities, quaint villages and a mixed array of countryside scenes.
If you want to be in a province with a long string of blue-flagged inland beaches, Badajoz is your destination, and on the most expensive street in the whole of the western region of Extremadura – the C/ Pantano de Puerto Peña in Badajoz city – you can pick up a home for an average of €464,177.
For a few thousand more, Avenida de la Rioja, in the regional capital of Logroño, is La Rioja's most pricey street with an average home costing €485,143, or in its neighbouring region of Navarra, the most expensive street, in the capital, Pamplona, is the Avenida de Carlos III El Noble, with a typical residential property coming in at €486,372.
Slipping past the half a million barrier, the land-locked north-eastern region of Aragón – home to more ski resorts than anywhere else in Spain – is largely rural, stunningly attractive and mountainous; and although Zaragoza is the capital of the only one of its three provinces where you can't hit the piste, you're arguably in the right area, given that these and the huge, stately-looking city are all served by the A-23 motorway.
The Paseo de los Ruiseñores has a lovely ring to it – Nightingale Boulevard – and is Zaragoza's and Aragón's most expensive street to buy a home in, at an average of €578,012.
Rugged, green and sublime, very northern European in appearance but with very southern-European weather, the north coast region of Asturias is often compared with Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and Wales – and shares its Celtic history, too. Its largest city, birthplace of Formula 1 legend Fernando Alonso, is Oviedo, which is home to Asturias' most expensive street – the C/ Progreso, with a typical home price of €609,455.
Also close to the coast but much farther south – and a golfers' paradise – Murcia is a single-province region bathed by the year-round warm waters of the Mar Menor, an almost-inland sea with a reputation for its healing properties, as well as being one of the parts of the country with the mildest winters.
And homes on its most expensive street cost less than a tenth of those of the top 10 priciest streets in the country – the Gran Vía Alfonso X El Sabio, in Murcia city, has an average cost per home of €621,000. That gives you a clue as to how much value for money you get in this cosmopolitan, but oft-overlooked, region, especially given its proliferation of nearly-new coastal villas.
The final 'most pricey street' with an average residential property costing under €1m is in the elegant, classical city of Valladolid, in the rural centre-northern region of Castilla y León; the second-least polluted major metropolitan area in Spain after Sevilla and ninth-least polluted in Europe, and the 12th-sunniest city in Spain and 30th-sunniest city on the continent.
Both this enormous inland region, and Valladolid itself – said to be the province where the purest 'received Spanish' is spoken – are very cheap for property purchases in general.
But if you're looking for luxury, you'll find it on Valladolid's C/ Acera de Recoletos, where a typical home costs €703,790.
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