What this page can and cannot be
A history of prices on the upper Costa del Sol between 2018 and 2026 would need two things Spain does not publish: per-property closing prices, and a record of how each buyer was found. Without them, any account of what the market did — how far it rose, how many residences traded, how much moved privately — is a reconstruction. Muse Selection was founded in Marbella in 2024. It did not watch the earlier years from a desk, and it will not narrate them as if it had.
What can be set down is a chronology of public events that every participant in this market lived through, each of which can be checked against the public record, followed by what does not change and what the register shows today.
The public chronology
2020. In March 2020 the market closed for a period: viewings stopped, and cross-border travel — the operational precondition for most purchases in this register — was suspended.
2021. The United Kingdom's transition period ended in January 2021, and British buyers became third-country nationals under Spanish law: the 90-days-in-180 rule applies to them, and so does the 24% non-resident rate on rent and deemed income. In the same year Andalusia moved ITP on resales to a single rate: it has been a single 7% rate since 2021; the earlier scale was 8%, 9% and 10%.
2022. Andalusia gives 100% relief on wealth tax (Article 25 bis of Ley 5/2021), in force since 22 September 2022. In December the state created the Temporary Solidarity Tax on Large Fortunes (ITSGF) by Ley 38/2022 of 27 December 2022, and while it is in force that relief is limited to the difference between the two bills. Ley 28/2022 of 21 December 2022 rewrote the Beckham regime with effect from 1 January 2023 and introduced the Digital Nomad Visa.
2022–2023. The European Central Bank raised rates through a sharp tightening cycle and began to reduce them in 2024. Buyers who use finance felt both movements; buyers who pay cash felt neither directly.
2025. Spain's investor residence visa (the Golden Visa) — every route, not only property — was abolished by Ley Orgánica 1/2025 of 2 January (final provision 21), in force since 3 April 2025. Buying property gives no right of residence at any price.
2026. On our own side: the published register starts at €350,000, and the Marbella Property Index has measured the whole published register from €350,000 since 13 August 2026. Its figures are therefore not comparable with anything measured before that date at the €1.5 million floor.
What stays constant
The supply side of the upper register does not need a time series. The estate at La Zagaleta — about 230 plots across nine square kilometres — cannot grow. The first-line Golden Mile cannot be extended. Sierra Blanca, with its roughly 300 residences set into the southern slope of La Concha, has a planning envelope that is not going to expand. Supply here is constrained by land and by planning, not by the cycle.
What nobody can quantify
No appreciation or year-on-year figure exists for these addresses: it would need closing prices at two dates, and Spain publishes none. The share of sales that never reach a portal cannot be measured: Spain publishes no record of how a buyer was found. No public dataset records buyer nationality at this price level. Any figure offered for 2018, 2021 or 2023 on these points — a rise, a count of sales, an off-market share — is an estimate, whoever publishes it.
What the register shows now
Current asking prices by zone, each with its sample size and date, are on the Marbella Property Index (museselection.es/marbella-property-index). That is the published side of the market, and it is the only side that can be measured. The desk does not forecast.