Estepona

What is Estepona?

Estepona is a municipality in the province of Málaga, west of Marbella, with about 23 kilometres of coastline and an old town the council has transformed over the past decade. The town is known as the garden of the Costa del Sol for the flowerpots covering the façades of the centre, and today has two property markets that barely resemble each other: the urban one, in the centre and along the promenade, and the estate market, on the New Golden Mile towards Marbella.

What has changed in Estepona is perception. For years it was where people bought because Marbella was expensive. Today people buy it for what it is: a town with a life of its own all year round, the same sea as Marbella and a noticeably lower price per square metre.

Areas of Estepona

• Estepona Centro: the old town, the Plaza de las Flores, the promenade and the pedestrian streets. Apartments and penthouses, life on foot.
• Estepona Puerto: the marina and fishing port, a kilometre and a half from the old town, between La Rada and El Cristo beaches.
• Seghers: a quiet residential district west of the centre, near the beaches.
• Las Mesas: the growing family area north of the old town, with schools and health centres nearby.
• New Golden Mile: the corridor towards Marbella, with El Paraíso, Atalaya, Bel Air, Benamara, Cancelada, Costalita, Selwo and Valle Romano.

The centre is urban product; the east is estates, golf and new build.

The Estepona old town

The council has pedestrianised and whitewashed much of the centre and filled the façades with flowerpots, turning it into one of the best-kept old towns in the province. The heart is the Plaza de las Flores, with the Casa de las Tejerinas and its terraces. The fifteenth-century Torre del Reloj is what remains of the old church of Los Remedios, damaged in the 1755 earthquake and later demolished. Of the castle of San Luis, ordered by Queen Isabella at the start of the sixteenth century, the remains of the walls survive.

The artistic mural route spreads more than sixty works across the façades of the town and can be walked in little over an hour. The Orquidario, a botanical garden under three glass domes, the largest seventeen metres high, holds more than fifteen hundred orchids. And the Mirador del Carmen, on the boulevard that opens the town to the sea, adds a library, a music conservatory, an auditorium and a viewing tower.

Beaches and marina in Estepona

The coastline runs about 23 kilometres across more than fifteen fine-sand beaches. The two best known, La Rada and El Cristo, flank the marina and fishing port, which sits a kilometre and a half east of the old town and holds 447 berths for boats of up to 35 metres. On Sunday mornings the marina hosts a market that is a fixture of the town, and the fishing port supplies the beach bars along the promenade.

To the east, the beaches of the New Golden Mile are wilder, with vegetation between the sand and the road and beach clubs beside the big hotels.

Golf in Estepona

• El Paraíso Golf, on the New Golden Mile, one of the classic courses on the coast.
• Atalaya Golf & Country Club, with two 18-hole layouts: the old course and the new course, opened in 1990.
• Valle Romano Golf, 18 holes, par 71, designed by Cabell B. Robinson, opened in 2010, five minutes from the centre.
• Estepona Golf, to the west of the municipality.

A few minutes away, already in Benahavís and Casares, lie Los Flamingos and Finca Cortesín.

Services and access in Estepona

Estepona has the Hospital de Alta Resolución de Estepona, part of the public network, with Hospital Universitario Costa del Sol in Marbella as the district reference. Málaga airport is around an hour away by motorway, somewhat further than from Marbella; Gibraltar airport is about forty-five minutes. The Selwo Aventura wildlife park, in the east of the municipality, is the classic day out with children.

What kind of property do people buy in Estepona?

In the centre and along the promenade, apartments and penthouses, many in recent buildings with pools, at prices per square metre that buy a front-line home for what a third-line one costs in Marbella. On the New Golden Mile, golf villas and new developments with more space per euro than Marbella and the same coastline.

It is the municipality where the price gap against Marbella shows most clearly without changing coast, which is why it holds much of the high-end new build of recent years.

Buying in Estepona with W Real Estate

The W Real Estate office is in Estepona, on Avenida del Carmen. We know the centre street by street and the New Golden Mile developments one by one. If you are looking in Estepona, start with the guide to each area and ask us about what is not published.

Getting to Estepona

Indicative driving times in normal traffic conditions, not measured.

Property prices in Estepona

Figures calculated on the 66 properties W Real Estate lists in this area today. They are not whole-market statistics: they are the price of what is available right now.