Jeremy Wilson always knew he would move to Spain and after 40 years of visiting on holiday he’s running Casa Dolly, a small B&B in the Moorish town of Cantoria in Almeria. With a budget of €70,000 (£61,000) he bought the six-bedroom traditional house and has had paying guests from the day he put it on Booking.com.
“I wanted to live in rural Spain, rather than be surrounded by expats, and I discovered that Almeria was great value,” Wilson says. Turning 60 was the trigger for him to give up his career working for a UK housebuilder and leave his home in Beck Row, Suffolk. “I’m half an hour from the coast, the scenery is breathtaking and I’ve been nonstop with guests — mostly Spanish but also Dutch and Belgian.”
The semi-arid corner of southeast Spain is Andalusia’s less developed province, famed for the Tabernas desert — where many spaghetti westerns and other classic movies, such as Lawrence of Arabia, have been filmed — and a pristine coastline with some of the best beaches in the country.
A four-bedroom villa with a swimming pool in Oria is on sale for €249,950 with almeriahomes.com
Your money also goes a lot further than on the Costa del Sol. The average property price in Almeria province is €145,000, according to the Spanish property portal Kyero — a fraction of nearby Malaga province, at €476,000.
The rub is that you won’t get beach clubs or big shopping malls; this area has always attracted an alternative crowd since hippies gravitated towards the little coves and wild volcanic landscapes of Cabo de Gata-Nijar Natural Park, and artists and bohemians made the pueblo blanco (white village) of Mojacar their home in the 1960s. The Pogues were inspired to write their raucous hit Fiesta after visiting Almeria city in the 1980s.
These days the popular coastal town of Mojacar is home to British, French, Norwegian and Madrileños keen on a slower lifestyle, and is attracting more and more Americans, says Andre Dos Santos of Veritas Homes Property Group. “Like the British, they are mainly buying holiday homes, with apartments from €150,000 to townhouses for €200,000 to €250,000. For practical reasons many buyers prefer to live in the playa [beach] part of town; not the pueblo.”
Mojacar attracts those keen on a slower lifestyle
GETTY IMAGES
Americans fly into Madrid or Barcelona — that the flight options into Almeria airport are limited can put buyers off; others fly into Alicante, two and a quarter hours away. Mild winters attract professional cyclists to train in the hills; and keen golfers, such as the former cricketer Ian Botham, to buy homes on resorts such as Desert Springs.
Ten minutes’ drive inland of Mojacar, property prices plummet, and Howard and Christine Lusby from East Yorkshire bought a two-bedroom flat in the village of Los Gallardos for £47,000 in April. “It’s a typical Spanish working village with everything we need. We will escape the British winters there for two months each year; summers are too hot,” says Howard, 62, a retired Ministry of Defence driver.
It’s been a balmy 16C there this week but the flipside is 40C days in August.
After stints of living in Saudi Arabia, Craig and Anji Badley grew accustomed to extreme heat and have just bought a 150-year-old seven-bedroom cortijo (farmhouse) in the Arboleas area, famed for its almond trees and fruit growing (the province is also known for greenhouse horticulture).
The couple moved from Shropshire three years ago but with four children and six grandchildren they needed to upsize from their three-bedroom villa.
A four-bedroom villa in the Arboleas area with mountain views is on the market for €314,995 through almeriahomes.com
“The barren, shrub-covered hills remind me of Scotland, but it’s surprisingly verdant,” says Craig, 49, who spent 23 years in the Royal Military Police. He now runs a gardening business, pruning the olives, palms and yukkas of other expats. “Our neighbour doesn’t speak a word of English but I love that. We didn’t want to live in a resort on the Costas.”
You can find a cortijo that needs work for as little as €40,000-€50,000, or one that’s renovated with a swimming pool for €180,000 in the Arboleas/Albox area, says Penny Holliday of Almeria Homes estate agency. Forty-five minutes inland, the market town of Albox is the biggest hub of the area, with tapas bars, shops, supermarkets and a school. “Our typical buyer wants a three-bedroom villa with a pool that costs from €175,000 here; or a renovated farmhouse from €180,000,” Holliday says.
It’s home to a large expat community, unlike towns such as Cantoria that attract hikers, artists and tourist business owners, like Craig; you can also ski in Granada two hours away.
A four-bedroom modern cortijo in the village of Las Negras is on sale for €595,000 with cortijosalmeria.com
Stefan Berman of Cortijos Almeria says a stream of northern Europeans are being attracted to the area, often for a change of lifestyle. “Homes inside the protected natural park of Cabo de Gata-Nijar are among the most expensive to be found in the Almeria region,” he says, referring to a four-bedroom house in the traditional fishing village of Las Negras, for sale at €595,000 through his agency. Cabo de Gata offers 54 sandy beaches, including the kilometre-long Playa de los Muertos, many of which are the least visited in Spain.
Need to know
● It takes 2 hours 50 minutes to fly to Almeria airport from London Gatwick or Stansted; flights can be seasonal
● Transfer tax is 7 per cent on a resale property in Andalusia; allow about 10-11 per cent of the total buying costs
● You’ll need a visa for if you want to stay more than 90 days in 180; Spain’s digital nomad visa is due to be available from January 1