A yield is a fraction. The numerator is what a residence earns across a year, net of the weeks it stands empty; the denominator is what it cost to acquire. In Spain, at property level, neither figure is public.
That is why this article no longer opens with a band. It used to publish gross ranges for long lets and for licensed short lets, sorted by zone, as though they had been measured. They had not been, and there is no source from which they could have been.
Why no published yield band is sourceable
Take the denominator first. Spain publishes no per-property closing prices — what the notaries and the land registry record reaches the public as district-level aggregates of declared values, months in arrears, with every class of stock averaged together. An asking price is knowable and is not what anyone pays. So the cost base inside any published yield is either an asking price treated as a completion, or an estimate.
The numerator is worse. There is no register of achieved residential rents. Portal figures are asking rents, and they behave exactly like asking prices. Short-let platforms publish nightly rates, which describe a price and say nothing about how many nights were sold — and occupancy, not rate, decides the answer. A gross yield built from an advertised nightly rate and an assumed calendar is arithmetic performed on two guesses.
No source, this desk included, can honestly quote a rental yield for a Marbella zone. What follows is the model a buyer can build for one specific residence, where every line is obtainable before exchange.
The denominator: what it actually costs to own
Start from the agreed price rather than the ask, and add the transaction layer: transfer tax on a resale, or VAT plus stamp duty on a new-build, together with notary, registry and legal fees. Your lawyer will price all of it in euros for your own case before you commit, and the total sits materially above the headline. Confirm the figures with counsel — the rates differ by product and change by decree.
Then add what the residence needs before it can let at all. Furnishing to the standard the target tenant expects, any works the survey identifies, and the cost of the months between completion and the first tenancy. A model that begins at the purchase price alone overstates the answer from its first line.
The numerator: what it will actually earn
Ask for signed rents, not advertised ones. A letting agency managing comparable stock in the same zone can tell you what contracts were actually signed at, and whether the last one took three weeks or five months to place. That is a real input, and it is obtainable by putting a specific question to a specific firm.
For short lets, ask a manager for the last twelve months of occupancy on a comparable unit — the calendar, not the rate card. Then subtract the weeks you intend to use yourself. August self-use is the most expensive line in most owners' models, and it appears in no published yield anywhere.
The lines that break the model
Licence position first, because it can make the short-let column zero. Andalucía requires a tourist-let registration attached to the property, and a community of owners can restrict tourist activity by qualified majority. The by-laws and the minutes of recent general meetings decide this, not the brochure, and both are readable before you buy. Where the restriction exists, the honest model has one column rather than two. Confirm the position with counsel.
Community fees next. In serviced and branded buildings — concierge, spa, staffed reception — the annual charge takes a substantial share of gross rent, and it is stated in the community's own approved budget. Ask for that budget, for the owner's share of it, and for any derrama voted or pending. A special levy for a façade or a garage is a real number attached to a real vote.
Then the smaller lines that decide the answer together: IBI and refuse charges, taken from last year's receipt rather than an estimate; insurance; utilities, pool and garden through the empty months; and management — a long let costs a modest annual fee, a short let is charged as a share of gross, and that share is both negotiable and material.
Finally the tax on the income itself. Non-resident income tax applies to the rent, and whether costs are deductible against it turns on where you are resident, with EU and non-EU owners treated differently. That difference is large enough to change the decision rather than trim it. Confirm with counsel before you model it.
The asking figures the desk can publish
The register gives a starting level for the denominator — what a zone is asking, before any negotiation. At the snapshot of 7 August 2026, across every residence listed at €1.5 million or above that our feeds surface, deduplicated so that one villa marketed through several agencies counts once, the median asking price is €2,950,000 and the median asking rate €6,867/m², over 579 priced listings.
By zone on that same snapshot: Estepona and the New Golden Mile ask a median €6,188/m² and €2,442,500 (n=108); Nueva Andalucía €8,652/m² and €4,289,000 (n=59); the Golden Mile €8,987/m² and €4,290,000 (n=57); Marbella city €7,968/m² and €2,175,000 (n=40); Marbella Este €5,599/m² and €2,925,000 (n=34); Sotogrande €5,320/m² and €3,650,000 (n=31); La Cala Golf €4,673/m² and €2,142,500 (n=8). Asking prices only, above one floor, at one moment. What any of them completes at is a matter between the parties and is published nowhere.
An honest limitation
If income is the primary objective, the €1.5 million register on this coast is usually the wrong instrument, and we would rather say so than model around it. Capital at this level buys scarcity, location and use — the qualities that hold value through a cycle — and the rent it earns is a partial offset to the cost of holding rather than a return in its own right. A buyer whose first question is yield is generally better served below our floor, in stock we do not carry.
The buyer who assembles those lines for one specific residence ends with a number that is current, particular and theirs. The buyer who accepts a published band holds a figure whose two inputs nobody can see. The first is worth more, and it takes an afternoon.