HAUSS MAGAZINE · 8 min read
On 3 April 2025, Spain scrapped the real-estate Golden Visa — the programme that, since 2013, had granted residency in exchange for a minimum investment in housing. Many analysts anticipated a slowdown in foreign buying across the country's most international areas. Marbella and the Costa del Sol were, on paper, the most exposed.
It hasn't played out that way.
What was expected, and what actually happened
According to CBRE, 33,134 properties were sold to international buyers in Spain in the first half of 2025 alone — 50% above the historical average, and the highest foreign share ever recorded. Scrapping the Golden Visa didn't slow demand. It didn't even leave a visible dent.
That forces a rethink of a widely held assumption: that international buyers of luxury housing in Spain were, above all, buying for residency. The data points elsewhere.
The numbers behind a market that hasn't cooled
- Prime housing in Marbella appreciated 8.1% in 2025, against a global average of 3.2% across comparable luxury markets — Knight Frank, The Wealth Report 2026.
- Coastal purchases now account for 83% of all foreign buying in Spain, with the average coastal second home priced at €2,970/m² (+12.1% year-on-year) — CBRE.
- The average price in Marbella reached €5,596/m² in January 2026 (+9.9% year-on-year), according to market data compiled by Engel & Völkers.
- In Benahavís, more than one in four international buyers is looking at assets above €10 million — Spanish Property Insight.
Who is buying in Marbella today
62% of buyers in Marbella are foreign, led by the United Kingdom (12.4%), Sweden (8.9%), the Netherlands (8.1%), Poland (7%) and Germany (6.7%). It is a deliberately diversified demand base — no single nationality dominates enough to concentrate the market's risk.
That diversification matters. A market that depends on a single country of origin is vulnerable to whatever happens there — fiscally, politically or to its currency. A market fed by five or six substantial source countries is, by definition, more resilient.
Demand in Marbella was never about residency. It was about lifestyle and land scarcity.
Why the Golden Visa was never the real reason
The Golden Triangle — Marbella, Estepona and Benahavís — holds some of the last buildable beachfront land in the European Mediterranean. The Golden Mile, La Zagaleta and Sierra Blanca have no more land to give. That scarcity is structural, and no visa programme changes it.
What has changed is the buyer profile: increasingly wealth-driven, less opportunistic, and far less likely to buy for residency alone. Today's buyer wants to live there — not acquire a passport.
What this means for an investor
For anyone assessing the prime segment of the Costa del Sol, the message is clear: the investment thesis should not rest on regulatory incentives that can change — as they just have — but on fundamentals that do not: land scarcity, climate, infrastructure and a diversified international demand base.
At HAUSS MARKET we track this segment closely for exactly that reason — because its resilience does not depend on a tax incentive, but on something far harder to replicate.