Estepona: a buyer's guide

Where it is

Estepona town is about 25 kilometres west of Marbella centre and 15 from Puerto Banús. The municipality is much bigger than the town: it runs along roughly 21 kilometres of coast from the Marbella boundary at Guadalmina in the east to Casares and the approaches to Sotogrande in the west, and inland to the Sierra Bermeja, whose peak, Los Reales, is the mountain behind the town.

Most of the property market is not in the town at all but along that eastern stretch of coast, marketed as the New Golden Mile: a run of beachside and golf urbanisations between the town and San Pedro that includes Cancelada, Bel Air, Benamara, Atalaya and El Paraíso.

How it came to be

Estepona was a fishing and farming town that developed later and more slowly than Marbella, which left its old town intact when Marbella's had been built over. Since around 2010 the council has invested heavily in it: the streets have been pedestrianised and planted with flowers, dozens of large murals have been painted on building walls, the seafront has been rebuilt as a long promenade, and an orchid house with a glass dome opened in 2015. The town markets itself as the garden of the Costa del Sol.

The land between the town and Marbella was cheaper and less built-up than anything east of San Pedro, so when new development returned to the coast after the 2008 crash it concentrated here. That is why so many of the new-build apartment communities advertised across the region are in Estepona municipality.

What you will find there

Old town and seafront: renovated townhouses in the pedestrian streets, apartments along the promenade and around the marina, and a few new blocks on the edge of the centre. This is town living with a beach, at prices well below anything comparable in Marbella.

New Golden Mile: new and recent apartment and townhouse developments, many gated with resort-style pools and gyms, sitting between the A-7 and the beach or around the golf courses of El Paraíso, Atalaya and Estepona Golf. Villas are found in the older urbanisations here and on the hillside behind Cancelada and Bel Air.

Prices are lower than Marbella throughout, though the gap has narrowed on the New Golden Mile as the new developments have sold. Off-plan buying is common here in a way it is not on the Golden Mile, and it brings its own questions: bank guarantees on stage payments, the developer's track record, and what else is planned on the adjoining plots.

Who it suits

Buyers who want a real town with a year-round Spanish population, a market, a working port and a promenade, rather than a resort. Anyone who wants a new-build apartment with modern specifications and warranties at a price Marbella cannot match. Buyers heading west for Sotogrande who want something livelier nearby.

It suits less well anyone who needs to be close to Marbella's schools, offices or nightlife every day: the drive east is easy off-season and slow in July and August. Buyers who want the established, walkable version of Marbella should look at the Golden Mile and Marbella Centre instead.

Practicalities

The A-7 and the AP-7 both serve the whole municipality; Málaga airport is about an hour by the toll road, and Gibraltar's airport about 45 minutes the other way. Estepona has its own public hospital on the edge of town, which matters to full-time residents more than it sounds.

The New Golden Mile is car-dependent; the town itself is not. Several international schools serve the area from Estepona and the western edge of Marbella. Cancelada and the beachside communities near it are the most convenient part of the municipality for Marbella commuters.