Los Monteros, from Río Real to Las Adelfas

Los Monteros belongs to the first generation of planned beachside living east of Marbella town, and it still reads that way: wide streets, mature planting, low buildings and plots sized before land became scarce. Its beach is registered by the municipality as Playa Las Adelfas, at Calle Monteros, and it carries both a Blue Flag and the Q de Calidad quality mark. Behind the urbanisation, the Río Real course — established in 1965 to a Javier Arana design, eighteen holes at par 72 — separates the housing from the hills. Between the two runs the old coast road.

The stock is mostly detached houses on generous plots, with a smaller number of low-rise apartment communities closer to the sand, and townhouse rows filling the gaps. Very little of it is new. Buildings sit low, gardens are old enough to have proper shade, and the boundary walls are established rather than freshly rendered. That combination produces a specific kind of market: buyers are usually choosing between a house that needs a full renovation and one that has already had one, and the difference between those two is the whole negotiation.

Life here is quieter than the town and busier than a hillside. The beach is used all year by residents, with chiringuitos such as El Kiosko Kite Surf and El Mangaleta on the sand, and the coastal path is progressively linking this stretch to its neighbours as the Senda del Litoral is completed section by section. What the urbanisation does not have is a centre — no square, no shops of consequence — so daily errands go into Marbella, four minutes west. Paula's read is that this is a place people move to twice: once for the beach, once for the trees.

The prevailing type is the low, wide villa on a flat or gently sloping plot, built from the 1960s onwards in the classical coastal manner: white render, tiled roofs, deep porches, gardens laid out for shade rather than display. Apartment building exists but stays low and sits closer to the sand, usually as small communities with mature planting rather than towers. Since 2000 a steady programme of demolition and rebuild has introduced flat-roofed contemporary houses on the same generous plots, so two adjacent addresses can be sixty years apart in specification and identical in footprint.

The beach is the amenity and it works out of season, which is the argument for this address over a hillside one. Las Adelfas has chiringuitos on it and residents on it in winter, and the coastal path is being extended along this shoreline in stages. Golf is immediately behind, on a course laid out in 1965. What is missing is a centre: there are no meaningful shops, so the supermarket, the pharmacy and the school run all go west into Marbella. Traffic is a town problem here, not an urbanisation one.

It suits buyers who want a beach they will actually use in November, a large plot near the town rather than far from it, and a neighbourhood where the trees came first. It suits renovators with patience. It does not suit anyone who wants shops, bars or a school within walking distance, a buyer looking for a brand-new gated development with a concierge, or someone who needs a large modern house immediately — most of what is here will need work before it looks the way a magazine promised.