Area guide · The villa estate round the La Quinta golf
El Herrojo
The villa estate wrapped round the upper fairways of La Quinta, on the Benahavís side of the golf valley. Houses on their own plots, known by a number, with the course where a street would be.
in El Herrojo today
for a villa here
read against the Catastro
with 27 holes at the door
The place
The houses round the top of the golf
El Herrojo is the ground of detached houses that surrounds the upper fairways of the La Quinta golf course, in the municipality of Benahavís. You come up to it through Nueva Andalucía or from San Pedro along the valley’s own avenue, past the hotel, and the estate begins where the apartment buildings thin out and the plots open up on either side of the golf.
Most people who live here say they live in La Quinta, and they are not wrong, because La Quinta is the valley and the club. El Herrojo is the name the land registers give to the villa plots inside it, and it is the name on the deeds. A house here has no street and number in the usual sense. It is Herrojo 28, or Herrojo 191, and that plot number is how the official record and every agent on this coast know it.
This guide sets out what the registers say El Herrojo is, when its houses were built and how large they are, what the days are like at the top of a golf valley, and what the numbers say, including the running costs that no official body publishes and that we hold ourselves.
A house on the slope of El Herrojo at dusk. The plots step down the hill above the upper fairways of La Quinta
Where exactly it is
Between the Ronda road and the river
The estate read west to east, across the valley instead of up it. El Herrojo sits round the La Quinta course, with the ridge and the Ronda road behind it to the west, El Madroñal above it to the north and Real de La Quinta on the next hill east, beyond the Guadaiza.
- 1El HerrojoThe villa plots round the upper fairways, pinned at the centre of the registered estate
- 2La Quinta GolfThe 27 hole course the estate is wrapped round, founded 1989
- 3The Westin La QuintaThe hotel on the course, at the lower end of the estate
- 4Torre EsterilThe neighbouring urbanisation over the ridge, named for its medieval tower
- 5El MadroñalThe wooded hill of large plots, above and to the north west
- 6Real de La QuintaThe new lake resort on the ridge east of the river
Orthophoto PNOA © Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España. Rotated so the area reads across the frame; the north mark keeps it honest. Pins mark the centre of each place, not a boundary.
The name was here first
Hill farms above a stream, then fairways, then houses round them
The same frame of hillside was flown twice, seventy years apart, and almost nothing in the first frame survives except the shape of the land. In 1956 this is the farm district the register still calls El Herrojo, with field boundaries, tracks and a stream. The fairways took the middle of it at the end of the eighties, and the houses took the rest.
Nothing was added to these frames and nothing was moved. The only thing that changes is how many of the plots round the golf have a house on them. Historic and current imagery © Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España, both rendered through one frame at one scale.
How it came to be
A name from the hill farms, kept on the deeds
The name is older than anything built here, and the proof is in the official street register for Benahavís, which lists El Herrojo twice. One entry is the urbanisation. The other is filed as scattered rural property, the register’s term for farmland and country houses outside any town, and it sits in the same list as Artola, the country district on this side of the Ronda road that the national gazetteer still gives as El Herrojo’s parent. The hill had this name when it was fields.
The neighbouring ground carries an older name still, and the heritage record explains it. Torre Esteril is catalogued by the Andalusian heritage institute as a medieval defensive tower and was photographed for the regional record in October 2023. The urbanisation just over the ridge to the west is registered under the tower’s name, in the same way that this one took the name of the farm district it was built on.
Everything changed with the golf at the end of the eighties, and the valley guide tells that story. What matters for El Herrojo is the order of events. The fairways were drawn first and took the middle of the valley, so the houses had to go round them, and the register shows exactly that. Read point by point across this hillside, the Catastro returns the golf course in the centre and El Herrojo on every side of it, with plot numbers that run from 4 to 231 among the points we read.
The houses came in one long wave that began in the nineties and has not stopped. We read fifteen plots against the Catastro as they fell on the map. The oldest house among them dates from 1994, nine of the fifteen were built between 2000 and 2008, and the newest was finished in 2022. The typical house in that set has 640 square metres of building, and thirteen of the fifteen have more than 450. An estate that is still adding houses of that size thirty years after its first is one that owners keep choosing to rebuild in.
A villa in El Herrojo across its pool terrace. Most of the houses here were built in the decade after 2000, and owners have been rebuilding ever since
The official register carries El Herrojo as an urbanisation and as farmland, so the name was here before the houses.
The earliest and latest of fifteen houses read against the Catastro, most of them from the decade after 2000.
Living here
The quiet end of a valley that stays open
Life in El Herrojo is arranged around a house and a garden, with the valley’s services a few minutes below. The hotel on the course has 170 rooms, restaurants and a spa, the golf club has its clubhouse, and both keep trading through the winter, so the estate has somewhere to eat, swim and meet without a drive to the coast. The ground climbs from about ninety metres above the sea at the lowest plots to about a hundred and sixty at the top, which is what gives the upper houses their view down the valley.
Families here use the same two international schools as the rest of the valley, and both are about ten minutes downhill. Aloha College Marbella, founded in 1982, is in Nueva Andalucía on the way to the coast, and Laude San Pedro International College, which takes children from two and a half to eighteen, is in San Pedro at the foot of the valley. The morning run goes down one avenue and back up it.
Benahavís is your town hall, so the municipal health centre is in the village, about a quarter of an hour up the Ronda road. For private care most owners turn towards the coast, where Quirónsalud Marbella and Hospital Ochoa are a short drive east, and Helicópteros Sanitarios has run a 24 hour home doctor and ambulance service from Puerto Banús since 1988.
San Pedro is about ten minutes down the valley and Puerto Banús a few minutes further, with Nueva Andalucía in between, so dinner, the beach and the marina are all a short drive from the house. Málaga airport is around an hour east. There is no railway on this side of the coast, and the plots are large enough that almost nothing here is a walk, so a car is part of life in El Herrojo as it is everywhere above the golf.
A terrace and pool in El Herrojo at the end of the day
Schools
Aloha College Marbella in Nueva Andalucía, founded 1982, and Laude San Pedro International College in San Pedro, ages 2.5 to 18. Both about ten minutes downhill.
Healthcare
The Benahavís health centre in the village; Quirónsalud Marbella and Hospital Ochoa on the coast, and a 24 hour home doctor service from Puerto Banús.
Getting about
About ten minutes to San Pedro, a few more to Puerto Banús, a quarter of an hour to Benahavís village and an hour to Málaga airport.
The golf
Twenty seven holes round the estate, home of the Benahavís Senior Masters since 2009, in a municipality with twelve courses.
What things cost
What is asked, and what was paid
Two numbers both get called “the price” here, and they are kept apart. Registered sale prices are published by postcode, and the postcode El Herrojo belongs to also covers La Quinta and the rest of the Benahavís hillside, so the deed figure belongs to that whole district. The asking prices are El Herrojo’s own, taken from the villas listed inside the estate, and they lead here.
Asking prices, per square metre
The bar is the middle half of what is being asked for each type in El Herrojo right now, from the cheapest quarter to the dearest. The number in the row is the typical figure. Nothing here has necessarily sold at these prices; that is what the panel beside it is for.
Asking prices per built square metre, resale stock listed in El Herrojo, 114 properties in total, as at 8 August 2026. From our own records.
What buyers actually paid
Registered sale prices are only published by postcode, and postcode 29679 covers El Herrojo together with La Quinta and the rest of the Benahavís hillside. So the deed figure below is for the whole district rather than for El Herrojo alone. Across it, homes completed this year at a typical €4,529 per square metre.
Read the two panels together and the lesson is the usual one: asking prices run over standing stock, which quietly accumulates every overpriced home that never sells, while deeds count only what traded. The gap between them is mostly that selection effect, not a discount waiting to be claimed. The full postcode picture, by property type, is on the La Quinta page.
- Postcode 29679, all homes€4,529619 deeds
- Postcode 29679, apartments€3,627457 deeds
- Postcode 29679, houses€5,498162 deeds
JUST Real Estate analysis of registered deed prices, Portal Estadístico del Notariado, rolling 12 months, captured 15 August 2026. Postcode 29679 covers El Herrojo together with La Quinta and the rest of the Benahavís hillside. Prices are moving: the official house price index for Andalucía rose 4.1 per cent in the year to 2025 Q4 (INE); the index is not published below regional level.
What you can buy
The stock that actually exists here
for sale in El Herrojo
96% of the stock
2% of the stock
2% of the stock
No official body publishes what is available to buy, only what has already sold, so this part comes from our own intelligence. Through our network memberships we see every resale property listed through an agency on this coast, which means we know both what is genuinely on the market in El Herrojo and where the same home is being advertised more than once. This covers resale stock only, not new construction sold directly by developers.
The shape of what comes to market says El Herrojo is one thing and one thing only. Nearly everything listed is a detached house on its own plot, with the occasional building plot and almost no apartments, which is the register’s picture repeated in the listings. That makes it the opposite of the valley around it, where houses share the listings with apartments and penthouses round the golf. A buyer who wants a villa in La Quinta is, more often than not, shopping in El Herrojo without having been told the name.
- Houses and villas11096% of listings
- Plots22% of listings
- Apartments22% of listings
Resale stock listed in El Herrojo as at 8 August 2026, from our own records. Treat it as accurate to within five to ten per cent: a few near identical apartments in the same building are not always recognised as the same home when the sources are brought together.
Asking prices and supply as at 8 August 2026 · deed prices captured 15 August 2026 · refreshed each week
What it costs to own
The figure nobody official publishes
Every buyer eventually asks what a house here costs to hold, and no public body answers it. We can, because we record it. Across the El Herrojo listings that publish their running costs, the median annual property tax, the IBI, is €2,600, and the median community charge is €3,180. Together that is €5,780 a year before utilities, staff, pool and garden.
The balance between the two is what marks this estate out from the valley it sits in. Across La Quinta as a whole the bill is €4,125 a year and the community charge does most of the work, because so much of what sells there is an apartment in a shared building. In El Herrojo the property tax carries far more of it, as you would expect of large houses on plots of their own. El Madroñal, on the hill above, runs at €6,784 on the same measure, and La Zagaleta at €15,977.
None of that is a reason to hesitate over a house you like. It is a reason to have the actual IBI receipt and the community budget for the specific plot in front of you before you make an offer, and we will put both there, because two houses a hundred metres apart on this hillside can carry very different bills.
per year
per year
per year
A pool and garden in El Herrojo. On a plot of your own, most of what the house costs to keep is inside your own boundary From our own records, 37 listings publishing running costs, as at 8 August 2026.
El Herrojo compared to nearby areas
The Benahavís hillside, from the top down
Five addresses share this side of Benahavís and its deed postcode, and a buyer looking for a villa above the golf valley usually ends up weighing all of them. The order below is the order of the hill, from the most private ground at the top to the valley floor, and El Herrojo sits where the villas meet the golf.
| Address | Typical asking, per m² | Listed | Running costs, per year | Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| La Zagaleta | €8,698 | 8 houses and villas | €15,977 | Highest and most private, behind its own gate |
| El Madroñal | €8,491 | 185 houses and villas | €6,784 | The wooded hill above, large plots among old cork oaks |
| Real de La Quinta | €6,152 | 22 apartments | too few to say | The new resort on the next ridge, built round a lake |
| El Herrojo | €10,418 | 109 houses and villas | €5,780 | Detached houses on their own plots, round the upper fairways |
| La Quinta | €8,672 | 347 houses and villas | €4,125 | The valley as a whole, villas and apartments round the golf |
Typical is the median asking price per built square metre for the type of home most listed in each area, named beside the count (houses and villas, or apartments), as at 8 August 2026; running costs are the median annual IBI plus community charge where enough listings publish them. From our own records.
El Herrojo is the address on this list for a buyer who wants a house and a garden with the golf valley’s services at the door. La Zagaleta and El Madroñal give more land and more distance from everything, Real de La Quinta gives new construction and a club, and La Quinta as a whole gives the choice of an apartment. Here the choice is narrower and clearer, a villa on its own plot, a few minutes from the clubhouse and a short drive from the sea. Which of the five is right depends on how you mean to use the house, and that is a conversation rather than a table.
Wider context: our guide to Benahavís, area by area, and our property market data behind every figure on this page.
Who buys here
Three buyers, and what El Herrojo gives each of them
The year-round home.
Benahavís had 9,472 residents at the last official count, and El Herrojo is one of the places they live rather than visit. The valley around you keeps a clubhouse, a hotel kitchen and a spa open through the winter, two international schools are about ten minutes downhill, and a house of the size built here has room for the family that arrives at Christmas as well as the one that lives in it.
The golfer.
Twenty seven holes begin at the foot of the garden, and the municipality has twelve courses in all, which its tourist board counts as more than anywhere in Spain except Marbella. The club at the centre of this valley has staged the Benahavís Senior Masters on the European Senior Tour since 2009, so the course you look at from the terrace is kept to that standard.
The buyer moving up from the valley.
El Herrojo suits the owner who already knows La Quinta from an apartment or a penthouse lower down round the golf, and wants the same address with a plot, a pool and no neighbour above. The estate is where La Quinta stops being a resort and becomes a neighbourhood of houses, and the move is a few hundred metres uphill.
Common questions
Questions we are asked about El Herrojo
Where is El Herrojo?
El Herrojo is in the municipality of Benahavís, round the upper fairways of the La Quinta golf course, between the Ronda road to the west and the river Guadaiza to the east. You reach it up the valley’s own avenue from San Pedro or through Nueva Andalucía, past the hotel on the course. San Pedro is about ten minutes away, Puerto Banús a few minutes more and Málaga airport around an hour.
Is El Herrojo the same place as La Quinta?
El Herrojo is part of La Quinta, and the two names describe different things. La Quinta is the golf valley and the club at its centre, with apartments, penthouses and villas round the course. El Herrojo is the name the official registers give to the villa plots within it, which is why houses here are addressed as Herrojo and a number. A villa here asks €10,418/m², against €8,672/m² for villas across the valley as a whole.
Is El Herrojo in Marbella or Benahavís?
Every plot we checked against the Catastro is in Benahavís, although the estate is reached from the Marbella side and most owners treat Marbella and San Pedro as their towns. Benahavís town hall issues the licences and bills the property tax, and the municipal health centre and offices are in Benahavís village, about a quarter of an hour up the Ronda road.
What type of property for sale in El Herrojo is most common?
Detached houses, to the near exclusion of everything else, which is what sets the estate apart from the valley round it. Of the 114 resale properties currently listed here, 110 are houses, with 2 building plots and 2 apartments alongside them.
What does it cost to run a home in El Herrojo?
Across the listings that publish their running costs, the median annual IBI is €2,600 and the median community charge €3,180, together €5,780 a year before utilities, staff, pool and garden. La Quinta as a whole runs at €4,125 on the same measure and La Zagaleta at €15,977. No official body publishes this figure. It comes from our own records.
How old are the houses in El Herrojo, and how big are they?
Most of the estate was built in the decade after 2000, and houses are still being added and rebuilt. Of fifteen plots we read against the Catastro, the oldest house dates from 1994, nine were built between 2000 and 2008 and the newest in 2022. The typical house in that set has 640 square metres of building, and thirteen of the fifteen have more than 450.
For sale now
Current property for sale in El Herrojo
A selection of what is for sale in El Herrojo right now. Every home we are listing here, with asking prices, is on the page for property for sale in El Herrojo.
5 bedroom villa for sale in El Herrojo, Benahavis
- 5 beds
- 6 baths
- Plot: 1,428 m²
- Interior: 675 m²
8 bedroom villa for sale in El Herrojo, Benahavis
- 8 beds
- 9 baths
- Plot: 3,631 m²
- Interior: 958 m²
6 bedroom villa for sale in El Herrojo, Benahavis
- 6 beds
- 6 baths
- Plot: 1,012 m²
- Interior: 644 m²
6 bedroom villa for sale in El Herrojo, Benahavis
- 6 beds
- 7 baths
- Plot: 1,232 m²
- Interior: 622 m²
7 bedroom villa for sale in El Herrojo, Benahavis
- 7 beds
- 10 baths
- Plot: 2,033 m²
- Interior: 1,296 m²
6 bedroom villa for sale in El Herrojo, Benahavis
- 6 beds
- 6 baths
- Plot: 980 m²
Free download
The Marbella Buyers Guide
Everything a buyer needs before the first viewing in El Herrojo or anywhere else on the coast: the purchase process step by step, the taxes and fees, the checks that decide whether a property is sound, and how the market has actually been behaving.
- ProcessReservation, private contract, completion at the notary, and the timings between them.
- CostsTransfer tax, VAT on new build, notary, registry and legal fees, worked through on a real price.
- ChecksCadastre, land registry, planning status, community accounts and running costs.
Prefer to read it online? The buyers guide page. Every figure on this page sits in our property market data.
Talk to us
Tell us which side of the golf you want
The plots below the clubhouse, the ones that look across a fairway and the ones at the top with the long view down the valley are three different houses at three different prices. Tell us what the days should look like, and we will send you the plot numbers that deliver it, with the honest drawbacks of each and the running costs in front of you before you view.
A person reads this and a person replies, usually the same day. No automated drip, no passing your details to another agency, and no obligation to view anything.
We have 25 years of experience in this market.
