Nueva Andalucía · New build & off-plan
Off-plan in Nueva Andalucía means a plot, not a phase
The valley was masterplanned once, in 1964, over 1,005 hectares with 75,000 tourist places, and its river boundaries have not moved since. So off-plan in Nueva Andalucía almost never means a phase in a new quarter. It means a single plot, cleared and rebuilt under a Marbella licence.
- Municipality
- Marbella
- Province
- Málaga
- Part of
- Marbella
What is being built in the valley is mostly a replacement. A 1980s villa on a generous plot near Los Naranjos or Aloha is bought, taken down and rebuilt as a contemporary house, and the buyer is often signing a construction contract with a builder rather than a reservation with a promoter. The distinction is not pedantry: the protections that exist for an off-plan purchaser — the guarantee on staged payments, the delivery penalty, the promoter's separate account — belong to a sale of a future home by a promoter, and they do not automatically appear when you are the one commissioning the works.
The second thing a new build here has to survive is water. The district is closed east and west by the Río Verde and the Río Guadaiza, and the two reservoirs built for the 1883 sugar factory, the Pantano Viejo and the Pantano Nuevo, are a reminder that this ground was engineered for water long before it was engineered for golf. Under article 6 of the Texto Refundido de la Ley de Aguas a natural watercourse carries a five-metre servidumbre for public use and a hundred-metre zona de policía in which land use is conditioned, so a plot near either river is not simply a plot.
Where a new house can still go in this valley
Honest answer: there is no masterplanned release here to buy into. The 1964 approval covered 1,005 hectares and provided for 75,000 tourist places, and the decades since filled that frame in. What comes forward now is a plot at a time — a tired villa taken down and replaced, or a small block of apartments on a consolidated parcel — and it is sold quietly, often before any portal listing exists. Paula names what is genuinely under licence in the valley on the day you ask, rather than printing a pipeline that would be stale before you read it.
The order of documents is what a buyer should be reading. The works are licensed by the Ayuntamiento de Marbella; the building is then finished; and only the licencia de primera ocupación turns it into a home you may legally occupy and connect. Where a promoter is selling before completion, the disposición adicional primera of Ley 38/1999, in the wording introduced by Ley 20/2015, requires every advance to be covered by an insurance policy or a bank guarantee and held in a separate account. Where you are commissioning your own house on a plot you already own, that regime does not apply to you — but the ten-year structural guarantee you were exempted from becomes contractable if you sell within ten years.
| Scale of the 1964 approval | The Centro de Interés Turístico Nacional approved in 1964 covered 1,005 hectares and provided for 75,000 tourist places. 2026-08-27 |
|---|---|
| The valley's two reservoirs | The Pantano Viejo and the Pantano Nuevo were built in 1883 to serve the sugar factory established on the Colonia Agrícola El Ángel. 2026-08-27 |
| Zones along a watercourse | Article 6 of the Texto Refundido de la Ley de Aguas places a five-metre servidumbre for public use and a hundred-metre zona de policía, in which land use is conditioned, along the margins of natural watercourses. 2026-08-27 |
| Cover for advance payments | The disposición adicional primera of Ley 38/1999, in the wording given by Ley 20/2015, requires advances to be covered by a seguro de caución or an aval solidario and deposited in an account separate from any other funds. 2026-08-27 |
| Self-builder exemption | The disposición adicional segunda of Ley 38/1999 exempts the individual self-builder of a single family home for own use from the ten-year guarantee, but obliges them to contract it on an inter vivos transfer inside that period. 2026-08-27 |
How this runs, step by step
-
Step 1
Establish who is selling what
Before anything else, write down whether you are buying a finished home from a promoter, a home to be built by a promoter, or a plot on which you will commission a house. Three different contracts, three different sets of protection, three different tax treatments. Agents on this coast use the word off-plan for all three, and the paperwork does not.
-
Step 2
Ask the parcel what it permits
Specific to Marbella
Buildable area, height, setbacks and how much of the plot may be occupied are decided parcel by parcel by the Ayuntamiento de Marbella, not by the size of the house next door. In a valley where neighbouring plots were developed decades apart under different rules, that check comes before the architect and long before the reservation.
↗ -
Step 3
Open the water file on the site
Specific to Marbella
If the site sits near the Río Verde, the Río Guadaiza or any watercourse crossing the valley, establish where the five-metre servidumbre and the hundred-metre zona de policía fall before you draw a pool. Works inside those zones are conditioned and need the water authority in the file. It is a slow answer to get late and a cheap one to get early.
↗ -
Step 4
Guarantee every payment before paying
Where a promoter is selling before completion, the disposición adicional primera of Ley 38/1999, as amended by Ley 20/2015, requires the advances to be covered by an insurance policy or a solidary bank guarantee and held in an account kept apart from the promoter's own funds. Read the certificate that names your specific payment, not the promoter's brochure page about guarantees.
↗ -
Step 5
Contract the works, not the render
If you are building your own single-family house for your own use, the ten-year structural guarantee is not required of you. The catch is written into the same provision: sell within that ten-year window and you must contract the cover for the remainder. Budget for it at the outset if there is any chance the house is a project rather than a home.
↗ -
Step 6
Complete on the occupation licence
Specific to Marbella
A finished building is not yet a home. The licencia de primera ocupación from the Ayuntamiento de Marbella is what allows lawful occupation and the definitive utility contracts, and it is the point at which the new description of the building should reach the Registro and the Catastro. Make completion depend on it rather than on a handover date in a marketing calendar.
↗
An off-plan or new build in Andalucía is taxed differently from a resale: IVA plus the stamp duty AJD rather than the transfer tax, and your lawyer confirms the current rates in writing before you commit. In this valley the money usually leaves in two streams rather than one — the plot, and then the build — which changes both the tax treatment and the timing, and it means the cost of holding a site through construction sits on your side of the table. A finished replacement house here sits above the tired villa it replaced and below a comparable home in Puerto Banús or Guadalmina.
GUIDE An indication of where this area sits, not a valuation of any particular home. Ask Paula for a figure you can act on.
Questions about this in Nueva Andalucía
-
Can I buy a plot here and demolish the existing villa?
-
It is the most common form of new build in the valley, but it is a permission question rather than an ambition question. What may replace the existing house — footprint, height, occupation of the plot, setbacks — is decided by the Ayuntamiento de Marbella for that parcel, and a neighbour's larger house is not evidence of what yours may become. Establish the buildable envelope in writing before you commit to the purchase, because the whole value of a demolition site rests on it.
-
Do the deposit guarantees apply if I build it myself?
-
No, and that surprises people. The guarantee on advance payments protects a purchaser who pays a promoter for a home that does not exist yet. If you already own the plot and hire a builder, you are the promoter, and what protects you is the construction contract itself: a fixed scope, a payment schedule tied to certified progress, retentions, and a named technical director signing off each stage. The ten-year structural cover is separately relaxed for a self-builder, with a condition attached if you sell inside ten years.
↗ -
What does a river boundary mean for my building plot?
-
It means two bands of restriction reaching inland from the water. Under the Ley de Aguas the first five metres are a servidumbre for public use, and the next hundred metres are a zona de policía in which the use of the land and the activities on it are conditioned. Neither band appears on a sales plan, and neither is negotiable with the seller. On a plot near the Río Verde or the Río Guadaiza, the sensible order is to establish where the bands fall, then decide what the house can be.
↗
The same question nearby
— NEXT STEP
Thinking about Nueva Andalucía? Ask Paula what is really moving there.
A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. It usually saves a wasted trip.