Money · 1 October 2026 · 4 min read
What it costs to buy on the Costa Blanca.
Plenty of the Irish buyers we talk to are weighing the Costa Blanca against the Costa del Sol, and the first thing to know is that the buying costs aren't the same. The Costa Blanca, from Dénia down past Alicante to Torrevieja and Orihuela Costa, is in the Valencian Community. The Costa del Sol is in Andalusia. Each region sets its own transfer tax, so the same price buys a different bill.
Buying a resale home
On a home that's been lived in before, the big cost is the transfer tax, the ITP. In the Valencian Community it's 9% of the price for homes bought from 1 June 2026, down from 10%. Above €1 million the rate is 11% on the whole price. Some buyers pay less, including younger buyers, large families and people with a disability, and your lawyer will check whether any of that applies to you.
On top of the tax there's your own lawyer, usually about 1% plus VAT, and the notary, the land registry and the gestoría that handles the paperwork, which between them usually come in under 1%. So on a Costa Blanca resale, plan on roughly 11% on top of the price.
Buying a new build
Buy new from a developer and there's no transfer tax. Instead you pay VAT at 10% of the price, plus stamp duty, the AJD, which the Valencian Community set at 1.4% from 1 June 2026. With the lawyer and the rest on top, a new build comes to roughly 13 to 14% over the price.
Worked through at €200,000
A resale at €200,000: transfer tax €18,000, your lawyer about €2,420 with VAT, and up to about €2,000 for notary, registry and gestoría. That's about €22,400, or 11%. The same price in Andalusia, where resale transfer tax is 7%, comes to about €18,400. So on this example the Costa Blanca costs about €4,000 more to buy into, which is worth weighing against what the money gets you there.
Working backwards is often more useful. If €200,000 is everything you have to spend, that's a property price of about €180,000 on the Costa Blanca and about €183,000 on the Costa del Sol. The full Andalusian picture is in the 10 to 13 percent rule, and the cost calculator does the Andalusian sums for you.
What doesn't change between the coasts
Your own independent lawyer matters just as much on the Costa Blanca as anywhere else, and for the same reasons. It's in your lawyer, not the agent's. Once you own the place, the yearly costs follow the same pattern too: property tax, community fees, the bin charge and insurance, set town by town. Typical ranges are in the yearly cost of owning.
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