Area guide · The golf valley behind Nueva Andalucía
La Quinta
The golf valley behind Nueva Andalucía, climbing from San Pedro towards Ronda. The course came first and everything else followed it up the slope.
in La Quinta today
for a villa here
at the centre of it was founded
that combine into one course
The place
A valley that was laid out around a golf course
La Quinta is the valley running north from San Pedro between the Ronda road and the Guadaiza river. It is a golf valley in the literal sense: the course was laid out before the houses were, and the shape of the address is still the shape of the fairways.
It is also, on paper, somewhere else. La Quinta sits in the municipality of Benahavís rather than Marbella, although you reach it from San Pedro and nearly everyone here treats Marbella as their town. That split decides which town hall you deal with.
The valley has a floor and a top and they are not the same purchase. Around the clubhouse the ground is gentle and the buildings sit close together; higher up the plots open out and the sea appears over the roofs below. Most of the disappointment here comes from buyers who priced one half and viewed the other.
Property for sale in La Quinta is usually searched by community rather than by valley, and two of those names have pages of their own, Real de La Quinta and La Reserva de la Quinta. Lomas de La Quinta and the homes around La Quinta Golf are covered here, alongside the villas and apartments we have across the valley.
La Quinta from the slopes, La Concha in the distance. The open green through the middle is why the houses sit where they do.
Where exactly it is
Up the valley, from San Pedro to the high ground
The valley read the way it is driven, from the coast at San Pedro up towards Ronda rather than along the shore. La Quinta is the ground between the old Ronda road on the west and the Guadaiza river on the east.
- 1La QuintaThe valley itself, the course through the middle
- 2Nueva AndalucíaThe next valley east, and the other half of the golf
- 3San Pedro de AlcántaraThe town at the foot of the valley, about ten minutes
- 4Puerto BanúsThe marina, roughly ten minutes east
- 5La ZagaletaHigher again, behind its own gate, same municipality
- 6GuadalminaOut on the flat by the sea, west of San Pedro
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
A river valley on the Ronda road, then a course, then a neighbourhood
The same frame of valley, flown twice, seventy years apart. In 1956 there is no golf here: the club was not founded until 1989. What came after it has been climbing the slope ever since.
Nothing was added to these frames and nothing was moved. All that changes is how far up the valley the building has reached. Historic and current imagery © Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España, both rendered through one frame at one scale.
How it came to be
The course came first, the houses followed it uphill
Three rivers cross Benahavís and all of them rise in the Serranía de Ronda. Between the Guadalmina on the town’s eastern edge and the Guadalmansa on its western one, the Guadaiza runs twenty two kilometres down the left hand side of the road from Ronda to San Pedro, carrying the name of Aixa, the mother of Boabdil. La Quinta is the ground between that river and that road, farmland and a way through the hills long before it was an address.
The change came at the end of the eighties. The club was founded in 1989 and the course laid out by Manuel Piñero, who had won a Ryder Cup for Europe, with Antonio García. What they built was not a single eighteen. It is twenty seven holes in three nine hole loops that combine with each other, which is why three separate stretches of open green run through this valley rather than one.
The town hall’s own description of those loops is the clearest account of the place anyone has written. The A loop is called San Pedro: open ground, wide fairways, the bottom of the valley pointing at the sea. The B loop is called Ronda: narrower fairways, harder greens, climbing into the mountains behind the town. The C loop is gentler but full of changes of level and dog legs, which is what the middle of the valley does.
A five star hotel of a hundred and seventy rooms was built on the course, and the club has twice held the Open de España Femenino on the Ladies European Tour, in 2011 and again in November 2018. The houses have been working their way up the slope ever since.
A villa on the ground above the course. The higher you go, the more of the sea you see and the less you walk.
The year the club was founded, which is why the valley is laid out around a golf course rather than a road.
Three nine hole loops that combine, two of them named for the two ends of the valley.
Living here
A valley that stays open in February
The school run goes downhill and then a few minutes either way. Aloha College Marbella, in the next valley east, was founded in 1982 by six teachers and a group of parents as a not for profit school, was among the first in Spain to offer the International Baccalaureate and now has more than nine hundred pupils. Laude San Pedro International College is a similar distance the other way, taking children from two and a half to eighteen.
Healthcare comes from two directions. Benahavís runs its own health centre in the village, because this is your municipality rather than Marbella’s. The private hospitals people actually use are on the coast: Quirónsalud Marbella and Hospital Ochoa a short drive east, and Helicópteros Sanitarios has run a 24 hour home doctor and ambulance service out of Puerto Banús since 1988.
Everything is a short drive and almost none of it is a walk. San Pedro is about four kilometres down the valley and Puerto Banús about eight, so both are roughly ten minutes. Benahavís village is a quarter of an hour up the road and Málaga airport around an hour east. There is no train, so a car is part of life here in a way it is not on the seafront.
What the valley gives you that the coast does not is quiet with a clubhouse in the middle of it, and a hotel that keeps somewhere to eat and swim open through the months when much of this coastline closes. Above the course the ground climbs to a little over two hundred metres, and the top and bottom of that climb are different places to live.
A villa on the slope at dusk. The course keeps the middle of the valley open, and that is what the houses look at.
Schools
Aloha College Marbella in Nueva Andalucía, founded 1982 and an early International Baccalaureate school in Spain; Laude San Pedro International College in San Pedro.
Healthcare
Benahavís runs its own health centre in the village; Quirónsalud Marbella and Hospital Ochoa are a short drive east, with a 24 hour home doctor service from Puerto Banús.
Getting about
Ten minutes to San Pedro or Puerto Banús, a quarter of an hour to Benahavís village, an hour to Málaga airport. No train, so a car is part of life.
Eating out
Benahavís calls itself the dining room of Andalucía and says it has the highest concentration of restaurants in the region. That village is your own town hall, fifteen minutes up the road.
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 only published by postcode, and this postcode is 29679, which covers almost the whole of Benahavís: the village, both golf valleys and the estates in the hills above them. Read the deed figure as the municipality rather than as this valley. The asking prices are La Quinta’s own.
Asking prices, per square metre
The bar is the middle half of what is being asked for each type in La Quinta 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 La Quinta, 689 properties in total, as at 8 August 2026. From our own records.
What buyers actually paid
Every figure here is a registered deed price, the amount declared in front of a notary when the sale completed, for postcode 29679. 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. Read that as a floor rather than a market rate. At this level a large share of houses are held inside a company, and when one sells it is often the company that changes hands rather than the house. A share transfer is not a conveyance, so it never reaches the property register and never enters the price per square metre the registers publish. What the official figure captures here is the smaller and more conventional part of the market.
- 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 almost the whole of Benahavís, La Zagaleta and the golf valleys included. 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 La Quinta
51% of the stock
30% of the stock
12% 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 La Quinta 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 up for sale says the valley is two markets wearing one name. The largest single share is a house on its own plot, the ground above and beside the course, and most of the rest is apartments and penthouses in the low rise blocks built around the golf. Very little bare land reaches the market. If you want a villa you are shopping in one part of the valley; if you want something to lock up and leave with a view down a fairway you are shopping in the other, and the two do not price alike.
- Houses and villas35251% of listings
- Apartments20830% of listings
- Penthouses8412% of listings
- Plots243% of listings
- Townhouses101% of listings
Resale stock listed in La Quinta 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 La Quinta listings that publish their running costs, the median annual IBI is €789 and the median community charge €3,336: together €4,125 a year before utilities, staff, pool and garden.
The split is the part worth reading. The community charge does most of the work, because a great deal of what sells here sits inside a gated community with gardens, security and a shared pool. The tax is the smaller half, levied by Benahavís rather than Marbella on the Catastro’s value for the plot underneath, which is one more reason to establish which municipality a house sits in.
€4,125 a year puts this valley below the addresses around it rather than above them. Nueva Andalucía runs at €4,400 on the same measure, El Madroñal at €6,784 and La Zagaleta at €15,977, a different order of commitment entirely. That is not a reason to hesitate. It is a reason to have the number in front of you before you make an offer rather than after.
per year
per year
per year
The garden, the pool and the gate are what the community charge keeps. From our own records, 324 listings publishing running costs, as at 8 August 2026.
La Quinta compared to nearby areas
The valley and the addresses around it
Four of these five sit within a few hundred euros a square metre of each other on asking price, which tells you almost nothing about how different they are to live in. What separates them is what they cost to hold, so that is the order below.
| 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 to the west, large plots and old cork oaks |
| La Quinta | €8,672 | 347 houses and villas | €4,125 | The golf valley itself, villas on the slope and apartments around the course |
| Nueva Andalucía | €8,246 | 1542 houses and villas | €4,400 | The next valley east, more golf and a working town below |
| Guadalmina | €6,460 | 271 houses and villas | €3,577 | Down on the flat by the sea, older, greener and level |
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.
La Quinta is the one on this list that is not really a single thing. Apartments and penthouses around the golf, villas on the ground above, so one name covers two different purchases. Which half is right depends mostly on how many months a year you intend to be here, 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 La Quinta gives each of them
The year-round home.
The valley works in February, which is not true of every golf address on this coast. A hotel on the course with a kitchen and a spa, two international schools within about ten minutes, and a town at the bottom of the road that keeps trading when the season ends.
The holiday home.
Everything that makes Puerto Banús worth visiting is roughly ten minutes downhill, and you come back up to a valley that is not part of it. For anyone who has owned nearer the marina and found the summer too loud, this is the answer.
The long hold.
The golf fixes the plan. Three nine hole loops run through the middle of this valley and none of that ground is coming back for housing, so the buildable land is the slope above it and there is a finite amount left.
Common questions
Questions we are asked about La Quinta
Is La Quinta in Marbella or Benahavís?
Benahavís. The Catastro records the golf course and the land around it in Benahavís, postcode 29679, although you reach the valley from San Pedro and most residents treat Marbella as their town. The official street register carries an area called La Quinta Golf in both callejeros, Marbella’s and Benahavís’s, so the boundary runs through this valley. Establish which side a house sits on before you offer, because the town hall that handles its licences and bills its IBI follows the plot.
How far is La Quinta from Puerto Banús and San Pedro?
About ten minutes to either. San Pedro is roughly four kilometres down the valley and Puerto Banús roughly eight, with Nueva Andalucía in between. Benahavís village is a quarter of an hour the other way, Málaga airport around an hour east.
Is La Quinta a gated community?
No, it is a valley of several separate communities with a golf course through the middle of it, rather than one gated development. Many blocks and clusters have their own gate, gardens and charge, and the villa ground above is different again. Ask us about the specific community, because fees and security vary a great deal within one address.
What type of property for sale in La Quinta is most common?
Houses, but not overwhelmingly, which is what makes this valley unusual. Of the 689 resale properties listed here, 352 are houses, 208 apartments and 84 penthouses, with 10 townhouses and only 24 plots. That mix is the golf resort and the hillside above it sharing one name.
What does it cost to run a home in La Quinta?
Across the listings that publish their running costs, the median annual IBI is €789 and the median community charge €3,336, together €4,125 a year before utilities, staff, pool and garden. That is below Nueva Andalucía at €4,400 and well below La Zagaleta at €15,977. No official body publishes this figure. It comes from our own records.
How old is the golf course, and who designed it?
The club was founded in 1989 and the course designed by Manuel Piñero, a Ryder Cup winner, with Antonio García. Twenty seven holes in three combinable nines, and it has twice hosted the Open de España Femenino on the Ladies European Tour, in 2011 and again in November 2018.
For sale now
Current property for sale in La Quinta
A selection of what is for sale in La Quinta right now. Every home we are listing here, with asking prices, is on the page for property for sale in La Quinta.
6 bedroom villa for sale in La Quinta, Benahavis
- 6 beds
- 6 baths
- Plot: 1,785 m²
3 bedroom apartment for sale in La Quinta, Benahavis
- 3 beds
- 3 baths
- Interior: 311 m²
5 bedroom villa for sale in La Quinta, Benahavis
- 5 beds
- 5 baths
- Plot: 1,157 m²
- Interior: 508 m²
4 bedroom villa for sale in La Quinta, Benahavis
- 4 beds
- 5 baths
- Plot: 1,035 m²
- Interior: 373 m²
3 bedroom penthouse for sale in La Quinta, Benahavis
- 3 beds
- 3 baths
- Interior: 177 m²
5 bedroom villa for sale in La Quinta, Benahavis
- 5 beds
- 5 baths
- Plot: 1,160 m²
- Interior: 577 m²
Free download
The Marbella Buyers Guide
Everything a buyer needs before the first viewing in La Quinta 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 half of the valley you want
The ground around the course and the ground above it are two different purchases with one name on them. Tell us what the days should look like and whether you want a gate, and we will send you the homes that deliver it, with the honest drawbacks of each and the running costs in front of you.
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.
