Los Almendros

Los Almendros — a quiet apartment pocket above the Ballesteros fairways, sea on one side, mountains on the other.

Los Almendros sits in the Los Arqueros area of Benahavis, on the hillside just off the A-397 as it climbs from San Pedro de Alcantara towards Ronda. It is a small, settled residential pocket rather than a sprawling resort: a handful of gated blocks set among gardens, looking down over the Los Arqueros golf course to the Mediterranean, with the mountains rising behind. The elevation is the point here. You are a few minutes from the coast but lifted above it, which buys you long views, cooler evenings and a calm that the seafront streets do not have.

What the homes are like

This is apartment country. The mix runs to flats and penthouses in low-rise communities, typically two and three bedrooms, with the penthouses taking the top of each block for the wider terraces and the best of the sea views. Expect generous terraces, communal pools set in mature landscaped gardens, lifts in the newer blocks, and private parking. Some of the stock is comfortably established and priced accordingly; some has been brought up to a more contemporary finish. We will walk you through which is which, because the gap between a tired apartment and a renovated one here is not always obvious from the photographs.

Who it suits

Los Almendros works for buyers who want golf and views without the price of a villa or the density of a beachfront block. Golfers like being a short drive or buggy ride from the Severiano Ballesteros course, the first he designed on the Costa del Sol. Families and year-round residents like the quiet and the easy run down to San Pedro for schools and shops. And because the entry point is far gentler than the surrounding villa estates, it draws people who want a lock-up-and-leave bolthole or a sensible first foothold in Benahavis.

Typical prices

As a guide, apartments in the Los Arqueros area generally run from the low-to-mid hundreds of thousands of euros into the high six figures, with penthouses and the larger, well-renovated flats sitting at the upper end and occasionally beyond. What you pay turns less on the postcode than on the floor, the orientation and the state of the terrace and views, so two flats in the same urbanisation can be worlds apart in value. We price every one against what has genuinely sold nearby, not against the asking prices around it.

Getting around

The A-397 is the spine. San Pedro de Alcantara, Puerto Banus and Marbella are all comfortably under twenty minutes by car, with the beaches just below them. Estepona is a short run west. Malaga airport is roughly fifty minutes via the AP-7 toll motorway. You will want a car here, as you would across most of Benahavis, but the position is genuinely central: you are close to everything without sitting in any of it.

How we work

We are a family agency, Bianca and Omer, and we have spent twenty years on this stretch of the coast. We would rather you bought the right apartment than any apartment, so we will tell you when a place is over-asking, when the view will not survive the next phase of building below, and when something quietly better is about to come up. If Los Almendros sounds like your kind of quiet, drop us a line.