Area guide · The beach estates of the New Golden Mile
Costalita
A family of beachside estates on the dunes of El Saladillo, halfway between Estepona and Puerto Banús. One name on the gate, eight urbanisations on the official register, and the sand at the end of the garden path.
in Costalita today
for a house here
register sharing one name
east to Puerto Banús
The place
The estates on the dunes of El Saladillo
Costalita is the stretch of the New Golden Mile where the estates stand on the sea side of the coast road. It sits roughly halfway between Estepona and Puerto Banús, low white apartments and townhouses set in gardens that run down to the dunes of El Saladillo, so the beach is reached on foot through the greenery rather than across traffic.
The name covers more than one gate. The official street register lists eight separate urbanisations carrying it, from Costalita del Mar on the dune line to the Terrazas and the two Pueblo Andaluz phases behind, and what they share matters more than what divides them: the gardens, the pools, and the coastal path that now runs along the front of all of them.
This guide sets out what stood on this shore for the last two thousand years, what the register actually says about the place, what living here is like through a winter as well as an August, and what the numbers say, including the running costs no official body publishes and we hold ourselves.
Costalita from the air. The buildings stay low and the gardens take up most of the ground
Where exactly it is
Between the tower and the golf coast
The shore read west to east, from the Torre de Guadalmansa at the mouth of the river to the corridor’s eastern shoulder. Costalita sits in the middle of the Saladillo beach with Cancelada and Bel Air on the rises behind it, and Atalaya between here and Guadalmina.
- 1CostalitaThe estate family itself, between the coast road and the sand
- 2Playa del SaladilloThe beach the whole family fronts, dunes and pines behind the sand
- 3Torre de GuadalmansaThe tenth century watchtower at the west end of the beach
- 4CanceladaThe working village on the rise behind: shops, school, church square
- 5Bel AirThe residential quarter inland, between the village and the golf
- 6AtalayaGolf and schools on the corridor’s eastern shoulder
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.
There was nothing here
Cane fields and a dune line, then the coast road, then the gardens
The same frame of coast, flown twice, seventy years apart. In 1956 it is field boundaries on the flat ground behind the dune line, with the river and the coast road already there. The gardens and pools are the newest layer of a shore that has been worked, watched and farmed for two thousand years.
Nothing was added to these frames and nothing was moved. The only thing that changes is how much of the flat ground is spoken for. Historic and current imagery © Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España, both rendered through one frame at one scale.
How it came to be
Two thousand years on this shore, and the houses came last
Walk to the west end of the beach and you reach the oldest address in the neighbourhood. Beside the mouth of the Guadalmansa river lie the remains of the Villa romana de las Torres, a Roman villa with its own factory for salted fish, built between the end of the second century and the start of the third. It was first dug in 1915 and 1916, then properly in 1929, and the finds read like a museum case: several mosaics, coins of Vespasian, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, a marble head. The site was declared a protected archaeological zone in 1996 and is kept as open green space among the urbanisations, which is why a corner of this coast is lawn rather than building.
Above the villa stands the tower that names it. The Torre de Guadalmansa began in the tenth century as a Muslim watchtower, was rebuilt in the sixteenth and topped with a sentry box in the nineteenth, and at fourteen metres it is the only tower on Estepona’s coast with a square plan. For most of recorded history this shore was watched rather than lived on, and the tower is the proof still standing at the end of the sand.
The ground behind the dunes spent the nineteenth century as farmland, and not just any farmland. It belonged to the orbit of the colonia agrícola de San Pedro Alcántara, the great agricultural estate whose ground ran across Marbella, Benahavís and Estepona, and whose Estepona territory was run from the cortijo de Cancelada on the rise behind this coast. The village that grew from that cortijo keeps the name of the condesa de Cancelada, one of the titles of the wife of the Marqués del Duero, and the plains by the Guadalmansa were among the flats the colony worked. Sugar cane grew where the pools are now.
The estates themselves are the newest layer, drawn on those flats when tourism replaced the cane, and the register records how it was done: not one development but eight urbanisations sharing a name, laid community by community along the dune line. The newest layer of all is public. In 2021 the town hall bridged the Guadalmansa with 62.5 metres of timber, the longest bridge on its coastal path, and joined this beach to eleven uninterrupted kilometres of path to Estepona port. By May 2025 the corridor stood at 21 of its 23 kilometres, and the stretch in front of Costalita is built.
A villa and its garden in Costalita, a short walk from the beach
The Guadalmansa tower at the end of the beach began as a tenth century watchtower and still stands fourteen metres tall.
Eight separate urbanisations on the official register share the Costalita name, laid out along one line of dunes.
Living here
Built for February as well as August
The beach is the daily fact of life here rather than the weekend one, and the town hall has spent a decade making it more so. The senda litoral runs along the front of the estates, and in 2021 a 62.5 metre timber bridge, the longest on Estepona’s coastal path, crossed the Guadalmansa at the west end of the beach and joined this stretch to eleven uninterrupted kilometres of path to Estepona port. By May 2025 the corridor stood at 21 of its planned 23 kilometres. The morning walk can end at a beach bar or in the old town, and the dunes and pines the town’s own record protects give the sand its shade.
The schools are closer than a resort address has any right to expect. Mayfair International Academy teaches a British curriculum from three to eighteen at Atalaya, a few minutes east; the Atlas American School of Málaga teaches an American curriculum at Selwo Hills, a short drive west; and CEIP Ramón Lago, the state school, is in Cancelada on the rise behind. Colegio San José, private and bilingual with the International Baccalaureate, is on the eastern edge of Estepona town about ten minutes away. Three systems within minutes, a fourth within ten, is a sentence few beach addresses can write.
Healthcare runs in both directions. Hospital de Estepona, the public high resolution hospital opened in 2021, is about ten minutes west; Hospital Costa del Sol, the region’s big public hospital on the A-7 east of Marbella, is about twenty five minutes east; and the private hospitals around Marbella and Puerto Banús are all within the same drive. For a doctor, a specialist or an emergency, nothing is far.
Getting about is a coast road life. The A-7 runs directly behind the estates, Estepona’s old town is about ten minutes west and Puerto Banús about ten minutes east, with Málaga airport around fifty minutes and Gibraltar about three quarters of an hour. There is no train on this coast, so a car, or a driver, is part of life here.
Communal gardens in Costalita, where the water features and the planting are part of what the fees pay for
Schools
Mayfair International Academy at Atalaya, British curriculum 3 to 18; Atlas American School at Selwo Hills; CEIP Ramón Lago in Cancelada; Colegio San José ten minutes west.
Healthcare
Hospital de Estepona about ten minutes west, Hospital Costa del Sol east of Marbella, and the private hospitals around Puerto Banús in between.
Getting about
Ten minutes to Estepona or Puerto Banús, about fifty to Málaga airport, forty five to Gibraltar. A car is part of life.
The beach
El Saladillo, with dunes and pines behind the sand, an accessible beach in the town’s own record, and the coastal path running its length.
What things cost
What is asked, and what was paid
Two numbers both get called “the price” here, and setting them side by side without saying which is which is how a guide contradicts itself. So they are kept apart. Registered sale prices are only published by postcode, and postcodes 29688 and 29689 cover Costalita together with the whole New Golden Mile, so the deed figure belongs to that much larger coast rather than to this beach. The asking prices are Costalita’s own, and they lead here.
Asking prices, per square metre
The bar is the middle half of what is being asked for each type in Costalita 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 Costalita, 102 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 postcodes 29688 and 29689 cover Costalita together with the whole New Golden Mile. So the deed figure below is for the whole district rather than for Costalita alone. Across it, homes completed this year at a typical €3,554 per square metre, 3 per cent above Estepona as a whole. Houses went for €3,952 over an average 199 square metres, against €3,579 for a house in Estepona as a whole.
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 The New Golden Mile page.
- Postcode 29688 and 29689, all homes€3,5541,083 deeds
- Postcode 29688 and 29689, apartments€3,375850 deeds
- Postcode 29688 and 29689, houses€3,952233 deeds
- Estepona, all homes€3,4373,168 deeds
- Estepona, houses€3,579462 deeds
JUST Real Estate analysis of registered deed prices, Portal Estadístico del Notariado, rolling 12 months, captured 15 August 2026. Postcodes 29688 and 29689 cover Costalita together with the whole New Golden Mile. 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 Costalita
67% of the stock
24% of the stock
5% 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 Costalita 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 is for sale says what the place is. Two of every three listings are apartments, houses make up about a quarter, and plots almost never appear, because the strip between the road and the sand was fully drawn years ago. The unusual thing is at the top: the frontline apartment sets the pace per square metre here, above the houses behind it, which is the reverse of how most of this coast prices. On the Saladillo the asset is the position on the dune line, not the plot.
- Apartments6867% of listings
- Houses and villas2424% of listings
- Penthouses55% of listings
- Plots33% of listings
- Townhouses22% of listings
Resale stock listed in Costalita 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 home here costs to hold, and no public body answers it. We can, because we record it. Across the Costalita listings that publish their running costs, the median annual property tax, the IBI, is €764, and the median community charge is €2,136. Together that is €2,900 a year before utilities and insurance.
The community charge is what carries the figure, and it is buying something specific: the gardens, the pools and the maintained frontage that make the place work without the owner being there. The tax side is gentle because most homes are apartments rather than villas on big plots. Along the corridor, Bel Air inland runs at €2,580 a year on the same measure, El Paraíso at €3,360 and Cancelada at €3,859, so Costalita sits in the middle of its neighbours while holding the beach.
None of that is a reason to hesitate. It is a reason to know the number before you make an offer rather than after, and to have it in front of you when a seller’s agent tells you the fees are modest.
per year
per year
per year
A communal pool in Costalita. Gardens and pools on this scale are what the community fees here go towards From our own records, 69 listings publishing running costs, as at 8 August 2026.
Costalita compared to nearby areas
The corridor ladder, in order
Five addresses share this stretch of Estepona coast and one deed postcode, and they do not trade level. House asking prices put them in this order, and the reasons each sits where it does are as useful as the order itself.
| Address | Typical asking, per m² | Listed | Running costs, per year | Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| El Paraíso | €5,146 | 205 houses and villas | €3,360 | The golf valley behind the coast, the dearest of the group |
| Atalaya | €4,762 | 77 houses and villas | €4,007 | Golf and schools on the corridor’s eastern shoulder |
| Costalita | €9,522 | 57 apartments | €2,900 | The beachside family, where the frontline apartment leads the market |
| Bel Air | €4,363 | 48 houses and villas | €2,580 | The residential quarter inland, with the gentlest holding costs |
| Cancelada | €5,292 | 70 apartments | €3,859 | The working village, the corridor’s most affordable entry |
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.
The golf addresses carry the corridor’s highest house prices, but Costalita is the one place in the group where the market pays most for an apartment, because it is the one place standing on the sand. Whether the day should start on the dune line or the first tee is the real question, and that is a conversation rather than a table.
Wider context: our guide to Estepona, area by area, and our property market data behind every figure on this page.
Who buys here
Three buyers, and what Costalita gives each of them
The year-round home.
The case is stronger than it looks from the sun lounger. Three school systems sit within a few minutes, Estepona’s public hospital is about ten minutes west, and the coastal path turns the beach from a summer amenity into a daily one. February here is a walk on an empty sand with the heating on at home, not a shuttered resort.
The holiday home.
This is what most of Costalita was built to be, and it does it with very little friction. The community keeps the gardens and pools, the beach needs no car, and Estepona’s old town and Puerto Banús are each about ten minutes away in opposite directions, so the evenings can be as quiet or as loud as the mood.
The long hold.
The strip between the coast road and the sand is fully drawn. Plots almost never come to market here, the dune line in front is the beach’s own ground rather than anyone’s building land, and the coastal path has quietly upgraded the frontage of every community it passes. What exists on the sea side of the road is what there will be.
Common questions
Questions we are asked about Costalita
Where is Costalita?
On the coast of the Estepona municipality, roughly halfway between Estepona town and Puerto Banús on the stretch known as the New Golden Mile. The estates stand on the sea side of the A-7, fronting the Saladillo beach, about ten minutes from Estepona one way and Puerto Banús the other.
Is Costalita on the beach?
Yes, and more directly than most addresses that say so. The communities sit between the coast road and the sand, with the dunes and pines of El Saladillo in front of them and the senda litoral, Estepona’s coastal path, running along the frontage. The beach is reached on foot through the gardens.
What type of property for sale in Costalita is most common?
Apartments, decisively. Of the 102 resale properties currently listed here, 68 are apartments and 5 are penthouses, alongside 24 houses, 2 townhouses and only 3 plots, which tells you the strip between the road and the sand was drawn long ago.
What does it cost to run a home in Costalita?
Across the listings that publish their running costs, the median annual IBI is €764 and the median community charge €2,136, together €2,900 a year. The community charge is the larger part, and it pays for the gardens, pools and frontage that make the place work in the owner’s absence. No official body publishes this figure. It comes from our own records.
Why do so many communities carry the Costalita name?
Because the place was built community by community along the dune line, and the official street register records it that way: eight separate urbanisations share the name, including Costalita del Mar on the frontline, the Terrazas, the Triángulo and two Pueblo Andaluz phases. Gates, pools and community charges differ between them, so ask us which one a specific home belongs to before you compare prices.
Can you walk along the coast from Costalita?
Yes. The senda litoral runs along the beach here, and since 2021 a 62.5 metre timber bridge, the longest on Estepona’s coastal path, has crossed the Guadalmansa river at the west end of the beach, joining this stretch to eleven uninterrupted kilometres of path to Estepona port. The town’s corridor stood at 21 of its planned 23 kilometres in May 2025.
For sale now
Current property for sale in Costalita
A selection of what is for sale in Costalita right now. Every home we are listing here, with asking prices, is on the page for property for sale in Costalita.
3 bedroom ground floor apartment for sale in Costalita, Estepona East
- 3 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 137 m²
2 bedroom apartment for sale in Costalita, Estepona East
- 2 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 130 m²
5 bedroom villa for sale in Costalita, Estepona East
- 5 beds
- 4 baths
- Plot: 1,983 m²
3 bedroom ground floor apartment for sale in Costalita, Estepona East
- 3 beds
- 2 baths
3 bedroom ground floor apartment for sale in Costalita, Estepona East
- 3 beds
- 2 baths
3 bedroom apartment for sale in Costalita, Estepona East
- 3 beds
- 3 baths
Free download
The Marbella Buyers Guide
Everything a buyer needs before the first viewing in Costalita 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 how you want to live by this beach
Eight communities share the Costalita name and they do not offer the same thing: frontline or garden, apartment or townhouse, a pool at the door or the sand itself. Tell us what the days should look like, and we will send you the communities 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.
