Key Takeaways
- ✓ 1,900 of the 2,108 properties on our live book are new build. Only 208 are resale, so this choice reaches almost every buyer.
- ✓ Off-plan buys you selection and a staged payment plan; key-ready buys you certainty and a property you can actually stand in.
- ✓ Both carry the same tax in the Valencia region: 10% IVA plus 1.5% AJD. A completion date does not change your tax bill.
- ✓ Our feed does not carry a completion date field, so we check licence and delivery status scheme by scheme. Ask before you assume.
- ✓ The two biggest price brackets on the book are €400,000–€600,000 (529 listings) and €600,000–€1m (423).
Should you buy a new build you can walk through today, or one that is still a drawing? The honest answer is that it depends on how much of your decision you need to be certain about, and on how long you can leave money in a Spanish developer's account without losing sleep.
It is not a niche question here. 1,900 of the 2,108 properties on our live book are new build, against 208 resale. Whichever way you lean, you are almost certainly buying from a developer, and the only real fork in the road is whether the building already exists.
The difference in one table
| Off-plan | Key-ready | |
|---|---|---|
| What you see | Plans, a spec sheet, sometimes a show flat | The actual property |
| Choice of unit | Best: you pick floor, aspect and finish | Whatever is left in the phase |
| Payment | Staged over the build | Effectively all of it at completion |
| Your money in the meantime | Held by the developer, guaranteed by a bank aval or insurance policy | Stays with you until you sign |
| Time to keys | Months to a couple of years | Weeks |
| Rental or use in the meantime | None | Immediate |
| Main risk | Delay, or the scheme not completing | Paying for someone else’s leftover choices |
| Snagging position | Strong: you sign off before the final payment | Weaker once the developer has been paid |
What off-plan actually gets you
Selection is the real prize. In a phase of 40 units, the corner flats with two aspects, the top floors and the ground floors with the biggest gardens go in the first weeks. If you arrive when the scheme is finished, those are gone, and what remains is the stock nobody else wanted, usually the north-facing middle floors.
You can see the effect in how developer stock is catalogued. Benijófar's Pueblo 4 district carries 30 of the town's 37 listings at a median of €330,000, and Algorfa's Pueblo 3 pocket runs a median of €208,266 against €573,000 for the golf side of the same municipality. Those are phases, not neighbourhoods, and within a phase your choice of unit is the whole negotiation.
The second prize is the payment schedule. Off-plan lets you commit a reservation and a first tranche now, and the rest as the building goes up. If your money is currently earning something, or your sale at home has not completed, that timing is worth real money. We break the stages down in new-build payment schedules and bank guarantees in Spain.
What key-ready actually gets you
Certainty. You stand on the terrace and see whether the neighbouring block blocks your light. You measure the second bedroom yourself. You find out that the "sea view" in the listing means a slice between two roofs. None of that is available from a floorplan, and all of it changes how you feel about the price.
You also get the property working immediately: for your own use, for family, or as a rental. Demand for well-located coastal lets on this coast is steady, and a finished property earns from the first season rather than the third. We do not publish yield figures because we do not hold booking data, but the difference between a home that works this summer and one that works in 2028 is not subtle.
€200,000One-bed apartment, Gran Sol
Calpe · Gran sol
€229,000Three-bed apartment, El Raso
Guardamar Del Segura · EL RASO
€410,000Three-bed apartment, Playa de Fossa
Calpe · Playa de Fossa-Levante
The price question, honestly
The usual claim is that off-plan is cheaper. Sometimes it is: developers price early phases to get the scheme funded and moving. But we cannot show you a general discount figure from our data, because our feed does not tag completion status, and quoting a percentage we have not measured would be making it up.
What we can tell you is where the market sits. The €400,000–€600,000 bracket holds 529 listings and medians €483,000; the €300,000–€400,000 bracket holds 361 and medians €349,900. Below €150,000 there are only 46 listings on the entire book, and 41 of those are in Torrevieja. If your budget is under €150,000, your search is a Torrevieja search, and largely a resale one.
The scarcity argument for buying early
Here is the number that makes the case for off-plan better than any sales pitch. Across our whole live book of 2,108 properties, only 212 have a sea view. And they are not spread evenly: 170 of those 212 sit above €400,000. Below €150,000 there is exactly one. Between €150,000 and €250,000 there are ten.
The same pattern holds for the other features people say they cannot live without. 303 listings have a private pool, at a median of €1,271,000. 216 are near a beach, medianing €406,050. 154 are on or beside a golf course, medianing €519,000.
In a finished scheme, the units with those attributes went first. That is not a scare tactic, it is arithmetic: within any block, the number of top-floor corner flats facing the sea is fixed on the architect's drawing, and it is small. If your must-have is a view or a private pool rather than a postcode, buying off-plan is the only reliable way to get the specific unit that has it.
If your must-have is simply a good flat in a good town, that argument does not apply to you, and key-ready is the cheaper way to be certain.
Which one suits you
Buy off-plan if you have time, you care about which specific unit you get, your money is not urgently needed elsewhere, and you are comfortable reading a contract carefully before you sign it.
Buy key-ready if you need the property this year, you want to see exactly what you are paying for, you are buying at distance and cannot visit repeatedly, or you are financing with a Spanish mortgage and would rather have the valuation done on a real building.
Buy resale if your budget is tight, you want a mature area with grown trees and finished infrastructure, and you are willing to take on a property that will need work. Just know the pool is small: 208 resale listings against 1,900 new build.
The checks that apply either way
Whichever you choose, the same paperwork protects you: the building licence, the developer's bank guarantee or insurance policy covering your instalments, a nota simple on the plot showing what charges sit against it, and a spec sheet that forms part of the contract rather than a brochure. Our guide to judging a Spanish developer before you buy lists what to demand and when.
Then, before you take the keys, walk the property properly. The snagging checklist covers what to look for and which spec words hide the most.
Where to look
Browse new-build homes across the Costa Blanca, or narrow to new build in Calpe or San Miguel de Salinas. If you would rather skip the browsing, tell us your budget and your timeline below and we will tell you which schemes are finished, which are not, and which we would avoid.