Apartment for sale in Benitachell / Benitatxell, Alicante

The sun lifts out of the sea to the south-east, and because that is exactly the way this apartment faces, the first light of the day comes in flat across the terrace and keeps going, through the living area and into the bedrooms. You can stand there with a coffee before anyone in the building is awake and watch the water change colour. That orientation is the single most durable thing about this apartment: the sea view and the light are not features that wear out, need servicing or go out of fashion. Everything else here — surfaces, fittings, finishes — is work to be done, and the price of €290,000 reflects that honestly.

There are 97 m² built, arranged as a two-bedroom home with one full bathroom and a separate guest cloakroom, which is the layout that works when the second bedroom is used by visitors rather than by the household every day. The kitchen is open to the living space, so the whole front of the apartment reads as one bright room rather than a series of small ones. Worth saying plainly: the kitchen is the corner that receives the least natural light of the whole apartment, because the light arrives from the terrace side and the kitchen sits back from it. Both bedrooms, by contrast, get the same generous south-east light as the living area. The apartment was built in 2005, and the bones of that layout are sound — an incoming owner is reworking finishes, not moving the house around. A garage space with one parking spot comes with the apartment.

The terrace is the reason to buy this one. It is a proper outdoor room rather than a ledge with a railing, facing south-east over the sea, so it holds the morning and mid-morning sun and then softens into shade later in the day — which in July and August is exactly the right way round for eating outside. The building has a communal pool, so the swimming, the cleaning and the winter cover are somebody else's job: you use it in May, you walk away from it in November.

This is a second-hand apartment from 2005 in need of renovation. What is already in place: the 97 m² of built space, the open kitchen configuration, one full bathroom, a guest cloakroom, the sea-facing terrace, the garage space and access to the communal pool. What a new owner takes on is the refresh — surfaces, fittings and finishes. The energy performance certificate is in progress.

Cumbre del Sol sits on the cliffs of Benitachell — El Poble Nou de Benitatxell — in the Marina Alta, the northern end of the Costa Blanca in the province of Alicante. From the apartment, the nearest beach is 4.8 km away and the village centre 6.9 km. A supermarket is 3.5 km away and an international school is 2.1 km away, with a golf course 6.3 km away. Alicante airport is 103 km by motorway and Valencia airport 134 km.

Life up here is quieter than in the resort towns below, and more vertical: the roads run along the cliff edge, the pines smell of resin by August, and the light in the last week of September is the best of the year. With an international school 2.1 km away and a supermarket at 3.5 km, this is a part of Benitachell that functions all year rather than shutting down in October. You drive down to the beach for the day, you drive back up for the view.

A two-bedroom apartment with a big terrace suits that rhythm — enough room for guests, not so much house that a fortnight away in winter becomes a worry. The tramontana blows through in January and the terrace waits for spring.