Costa Blanca property prices keep climbing: a home in Javea now takes 69% of local income

The Costa Blanca housing market is running hot. Valuation firm Tinsa calculates in this summer’s coastal report that a home on the Spanish coast got 13.5 percent more expensive in a year. Nowhere sells more than Torrevieja and Orihuela. Good news if you own, tough news if you still need to buy. And for people who work here, it is starting to hurt.

Torrevieja and Orihuela sell the most

Torrevieja remains Spain’s best selling coastal municipality outside the provincial capitals: 6,913 home sales in 2025, although that was 4.8 percent down on the year before. Orihuela follows with 4,992 transactions, a drop of 7.5 percent. The slight dip says little about demand: supply is simply running dry. New build sales on the coast actually grew 9.3 percent to around 21,300, while the resale market barely moved.

Prices rising in double digits

A home in Spain’s coastal municipalities cost an average of 1,992 euros per square metre in the first quarter of 2026, up 13.5 percent in a year. The most expensive corner of Alicante province is the Marina Alta. The latest market figures put Javea at 3,436 euros per square metre (up 13.3 percent), Calpe at 3,042 euros (up 18.3 percent) and Denia at 2,676 euros (up 14.2 percent). Javea, Moraira, Denia and Calpe are the four most expensive places to live in the entire Valencia region.

Buying is becoming impossible for local workers

The report carries a sharp warning too. Buying on the coast swallows an average of 40 percent of household disposable income nationally, against 34 percent across Spain as a whole. On the Alicante coast it is 46 percent. The extremes are on our doorstep: in Javea an average home absorbs 69 percent of a local household’s income, in Calpe 60 percent and in Denia 55 percent. Economists call anything above 30 to 35 percent unsustainable.

The cause is no secret. International buyers with deeper pockets set the price level, and local families on Spanish salaries cannot outbid them. More and more of them are moving to villages inland. Local media and estate agents in the Marina Alta now call the rise unsustainable.

What this means if you want to buy

For foreign buyers the message cuts both ways. If you already own, your home has gained serious value. If you are still searching, do the maths honestly: add roughly 12 to 14 percent in taxes and costs on top of the asking price, and expect competition for anything well priced. Start with our guide to buying in Spain, and check the rental licence rules if you plan to let. If you are flexible, look just behind the coastline too: a few kilometres inland prices drop sharply, and the beach is still twenty minutes away.

About the authorLeonie

Leonie lives on the Costa Blanca. She writes about daily life on the coast: the markets, the walks and everything you only discover once you actually live here.