Los Flamingos Golf

Los Flamingos Golf — three courses round a valley, gated and green, a short run inland from the coast.

Where it sits

Los Flamingos Golf is a gated resort in the municipality of Benahavís, on the stretch of coast known as the New Golden Mile between Puerto Banús and Estepona. You leave the A-7 (the old N-340) at the Cancelada exit and climb roughly three kilometres inland, through a single guarded entrance that closes at night. The development spreads across a broad valley rather than clustering on one street, so homes sit at different heights and angles, with the Villa Padierna courses and the Anantara hotel at its centre. Puerto Banús is around ten to fifteen minutes down the hill; Marbella and Estepona each sit about fifteen to twenty minutes away.

The homes

Villas set the tone here. You'll find contemporary, low-lined houses with wide glazing and infinity pools alongside older Mediterranean villas with tiled roofs and arched terraces, most on generous plots and many positioned frontline to one of the courses. A run of apartments and penthouses fills out the picture in the named blocks scattered through the valley — Alanda, El Lago, Royal, Mirador and the rest — typically with golf or sea views and resort-style communal pools. Building plots come up from time to time for those who'd rather commission their own house to the resort's standards.

The golf and the resort spine

What holds Los Flamingos together is the Villa Padierna golf club and its three eighteen-hole courses — Flamingos, Alferini and Tramores — wrapped around the Anantara Villa Padierna Palace hotel. The hotel brings a spa, several restaurants and a racquet club with tennis and padel, all within the gates. As on most golf resorts, plenty of residents here never pick up a club; they buy for the security, the quiet and the green outlook as much as the tee times.

Who it suits

This is a place for buyers who want space, privacy and a managed environment a little back from the seafront bustle. Families settle in for the gated calm and the school run — Atalaya Colegio Internacional, Laude San Pedro International College and Aloha College in Nueva Andalucía are all a reasonable drive — while others use the villas as a low-maintenance second home with everything looked after between visits. It has long carried a quiet international cachet; the Villa Padierna hotel has hosted well-known names over the years, which tells you something about the discretion on offer.

Prices and getting around

Villas are the heart of the market and the figures reflect it: resale villas generally begin in the low millions and run well up into eight figures for the larger contemporary frontline-golf houses, with the headline new-builds higher still, while apartments and penthouses open the door more modestly. These are broad bands — outlook, plot size and build quality move the number more than the postcode does. You'll want a car, as the resort is spread out and inland; the nearest beaches at Cancelada and El Saladillo are a short drive down, Málaga airport about three quarters of an hour east on the AP-7, and Gibraltar a similar run west.

How we work

We've spent twenty years on this coast, and Los Flamingos is a resort we know plot by plot rather than from a brochure. We'll tell you which homes hold their sea view as the valley fills in, which face the wrong way for the evening, and which are simply priced too high — and we'll say so before you fall for the photographs. If you're weighing up a villa, an apartment or a plot here, drop us a line.