Ojén, 309 metres above the Marbella coast

Ojén is not a district of Marbella. It is a separate municipality with its own Ayuntamiento, its own planning department and its own budget, and that administrative fact is the first thing a buyer should absorb, because it changes who issues a licence and who charges the plusvalía. The village itself is compact, steep and white, built at 309 metres where the valley narrows, with a population of 4,755. Behind it the Sierra Blanca massif rises towards the Pico del Lastonar at 1,275 metres, and the municipality sits inside the peripheral protection zone of a national park.

Stock splits into two quite different things. In the village there are terraced houses on narrow lanes: small footprints, several floors, roof terraces, thick walls, and prices that bear no resemblance to the coast ten minutes below. Outside the village, in the south-east of the municipality, the La Mairena and El Vicario developments are a completely different market of detached houses on wooded plots at altitude, with sea views on a clear day. Between the two, there is very little. New building is limited by terrain and by protection, not by demand.

Life is village life. There is a square, a church, a handful of bars that are open in February because their customers live upstairs, a municipal school and an olive-mill museum. The mountain is the amenity: walking routes climb from the village towards the Llanos de Juanar and the old Larios palace, converted into a Parador in 1965. Nights are cool enough in August to sleep without air conditioning, which on this coast is close to a luxury. The nearest supermarket run of any size is downhill.

The caveats are the ones any hill village carries. Everything is a drive: schools, the hospital, the airport, the beach. Winter is genuinely cooler and wetter than the shoreline, and the road up is a mountain road with weather on it. Rental demand is thinner than on the coast and shaped differently. Paula's read is that Ojén works for buyers who want a Spanish village and a garden rather than a resort address, and for those who have accepted that they will drive to the sea rather than walk to it.

In the old village the pattern is Andalusian and vertical: whitewashed party-wall houses on lanes too narrow for two cars, thick masonry, small deep-set windows, tiled or flat roofs and an azotea on top. Footprints are small and floors are stacked, so a family house here is three storeys rather than one wide one. Outside the village the character changes completely — detached houses on large wooded plots in the south-eastern developments, mostly from the 1990s onwards, built for views and set among cork oaks rather than in streets.

February works here in a way it does not in a coastal urbanisation: the bars are open because the customers live upstairs, the school is municipal and full, and the square is used. The walking starts at the door and climbs; the Juanar road climbs to the Llanos above the village. Nights are cooler than the shore, and in August that is the local advantage everyone mentions. The trade is the car. The supermarket, the hospital and the beach are all downhill, and the last stretch home is a mountain road.

It suits buyers who want a Spanish village with neighbours rather than an urbanisation with gates, walkers and riders who will use the mountain, and those whose budget will not stretch to the shoreline but who refuse to compromise on space or air. It does not suit anyone who needs the beach on foot, a family that wants an international school five minutes away, or a buyer who dislikes driving a mountain road in the dark. Short-let investors should also look hard at the season here before committing.