Alicante Property Prices Rise 20.7%. What Does That Mean for Gran Alacant?

If you've been waiting for Spanish property prices to come down before buying, the latest figures from Tinsa may give you reason to reconsider.

Spain's housing market continued to climb during the second quarter of 2026, with the price of new and resale homes rising 15.2% compared with the same period last year.

That's the highest annual increase recorded by Tinsa since the third quarter of 2006.

But here on the Costa Blanca, the figures are even more striking.

Alicante property prices are up 20.7%

According to Tinsa's latest IMIE Local Markets report, property prices in Alicante province rose 20.7% year-on-year during the second quarter of 2026. 

The Comunitat Valenciana as a whole was also up 20.7%, the strongest increase of any autonomous community in Spain, while Alicante was one of only five Spanish provinces where annual price growth exceeded 20%. 20.7% is a huge number.

But here's the slightly crazy part: if you work in the Gran Alacant property market every day, it doesn't actually seem that unbelievable.

Why are property prices still rising?

At its simplest, there are still a lot of people looking for homes and not enough homes to meet that demand.

Tinsa points to population growth combined with an insufficient supply of housing as one of the factors continuing to push prices upwards. That pressure is particularly noticeable in coastal areas and places experiencing strong population growth.

Alicante is also a remarkably active property market. During the period covered by the report, Tinsa recorded 39.9 property transactions for every 1,000 homes in Alicante province. The Spanish average was just 27.

And Alicante has something else going on that anyone living here will already know: people keep wanting to come here. The Costa Blanca attracts buyers from across Spain, Europe, and increasingly further afield. Some are retiring here. Some are relocating permanently. Others want a holiday home or somewhere they can spend part of the year.

And while we may be just a little biased, it's not terribly difficult to understand the appeal.

So what does this mean for Gran Alacant?

This is where things get really interesting.

Alicante is an enormous and wonderfully varied province. A villa in Jávea, an apartment in Alicante city, a country house outside Elche, and a townhouse here in Gran Alacant are all included in that 20.7% figure.

So no, you can't simply add 20.7% to the value of every property in Gran Alacant. But some individual properties here absolutely have risen by 20% or considerably more. We've seen homes increase in value by 30% or 40% over just a few years. There are properties that have come close to doubling in value over a relatively short period. Prices that would have seemed wildly optimistic not very long ago are now being achieved.

At times, even those of us who work in the market every day look at the numbers and think, wow.

It has been an extraordinary period.

Why is there so much demand and so little property for sale in Gran Alacant?

This is where the provincial statistics need a little local knowledge, because several things have been happening at once.

There is still new construction in Gran Alacant, of course, but new build and resale properties don't necessarily appeal to the same buyer. New builds in Gran Alacant tend to be more expensive, and for many buyers, a brand-new property simply isn't what they're looking for. Some want the immediacy of a resale home: find it, buy it, move in. No waiting for a development to be completed. Others specifically want an established neighborhood, mature communal gardens, or the character of one of Gran Alacant's older urbanisations. And many buyers are looking for something that can be harder to find in newer developments: larger plots, more square meters, and generous outside space.

So demand for established resale property remains very strong. The problem is that less of it is coming onto the market.

Gran Alacant has changed

Fifteen or twenty years ago, a much larger part of Gran Alacant operated as a second-home market. Someone might buy a holiday home, enjoy it for a few years, and then decide to sell. Perhaps they fancied somewhere different, wanted something bigger, or their circumstances simply changed. Those properties came back onto the market relatively regularly.

Gran Alacant has gradually become much more residential. More people live here all year. Families have put down roots. Children go to school here. People have built friendships and routines and communities here. And a main residence behaves very differently from a holiday home. You might buy a holiday property and decide to sell it three or four years later. But when it's the house where you live, where your children go to school, where your friends are, where you walk the dog and where you've built your life, you might stay for twenty years.

That means less turnover. And less turnover means fewer resale properties becoming available for the next person who wants to live here.

Then COVID changed what many people wanted from a home

The pandemic added another ingredient.

Living in the center of a big city has enormous advantages when you can meet friends for dinner, walk to the theater, go to bars and restaurants, and have everything happening just outside your front door. During lockdown, most of that disappeared overnight. Suddenly, the difference between spending weeks inside an apartment with no terrace and having a garden, balcony, solarium, or swimming pool didn't feel like a minor lifestyle consideration. For many people, outside space became much more important.

At the same time, millions of people discovered something else: they could work from home. That opened up possibilities that hadn't existed for many workers before. If your job can be done from a laptop, do you necessarily need to do it from an apartment in Madrid or London? Or could you do some or all of it from a house with a terrace near the Mediterranean? Not everyone can work remotely, of course, and many employers have since brought people back into the office for at least part of the week. But remote and hybrid working have given some people much greater freedom over where they live.

Gran Alacant happens to work rather well for that kind of life. Alicante-Elche Airport is only a few minutes away, with excellent connections to cities across Europe. Alicante has high-speed rail connections to Madrid. You can have the beach and countryside on your doorstep, your own outside space, and still be remarkably well connected.

That's a pretty compelling combination.

The Gran Alacant buyer is changing too

Gran Alacant has long attracted a wonderfully international mix of residents.

Spanish and British buyers remain an important part of the market, alongside buyers from across northern and western Europe. But over recent years we've also seen the mix broaden. In our own day-to-day business, we've dealt with more buyers from eastern Europe, including Ukrainians and Poles, and we've begun to see more interest from Americans considering Spain for a permanent move, retirement, or a second home.

There are all sorts of individual reasons behind those decisions. Economic changes, remote working, family circumstances, lifestyle, and, sometimes, wider events in the world all play a part.

We wouldn't pretend those buyers alone explain Alicante's property statistics. But they are part of a broader change we've seen firsthand: the potential pool of people interested in living in Gran Alacant is wider and more international than it once was.

Meanwhile, the supply of the resale properties many of them want remains limited.

More buyers.

Less turnover.

Limited stock.

Put those things together and it becomes much easier to understand how we've arrived at a market where some properties have increased in value by 20%, 40%, or even more in just a few years.

This is where local knowledge really matters

Gran Alacant isn't one single property market either. 

We have everything from compact apartments and traditional townhouses to detached villas with private pools. Some urbanisations are particularly sought after. Certain property types are increasingly difficult to find.

Orientation matters. Outside space matters. Views matter. Condition matters. Parking can matter. The urbanisation matters.

And scarcity can make an enormous difference.

If ten similar properties are for sale in the same urbanisation, buyers have choices.

If there's one?

That's a very different market.

Sometimes there's also simply something about a particular house that makes buyers walk through the door and think, “Oh. This is the one.”

That's one of the reasons property valuation isn't an exact science, particularly in a market moving as quickly as this one.

What does this mean if you're thinking of selling?

For homeowners who have been wondering whether this might be a good time to sell, the latest figures are certainly encouraging. Prices are strong, Alicante continues to record a high level of property transactions, and here in Gran Alacant we continue to see strong demand for good resale properties. But a rising market doesn't make pricing irrelevant.

In fact, valuing a Gran Alacant property today can be more complicated precisely because the market has moved so quickly. Looking at what the house next door sold for three or four years ago may tell you surprisingly little about what your property could achieve today. We need to know what's sold recently, what's attracting buyers now, what's sitting unsold, what's receiving multiple offers, and which types of property we simply can't get enough of.

And we have never believed that good estate agency means telling someone the biggest number possible simply to get the listing. An impressive valuation isn't much use if the property then sits on the market for months while realistically priced homes around it sell.

The aim is to understand the best price your particular property can realistically achieve in today's market, and then market it properly to achieve it.

And what if you're thinking about buying?

This is perhaps where the latest figures provide the most food for thought.

Over the years, we've spoken to plenty of buyers who decided to wait because they were convinced Spanish property prices were about to fall. Sometimes property markets do fall. Nobody knows with certainty what prices will do next, and a 20.7% annual increase certainly doesn't mean Alicante property prices will rise another 20.7% over the coming year.

Markets change.

But for buyers who have spent the past few years waiting for a substantial correction, that wait hasn't worked in their favor. And in a market with limited inventory, waiting can create another problem. You may finally find exactly the kind of property you've been looking for, only to discover several other buyers have been waiting for it too.

If you're buying somewhere to live, retire, spend your holidays, or enjoy for many years, perfectly timing the property market may matter rather less than finding the right home, in the right place, at a price you can comfortably afford.

A home is an investment, of course. But it's also where you drink your coffee in the morning.

The numbers are useful. Knowing the streets is better.

We love good property-market data. It helps us understand the bigger picture and, after many years of selling homes here, it's fascinating to see the national and provincial numbers reflecting some of the changes we've been watching on the ground in Gran Alacant. But statistics can only take you so far.

Gran Alacant is a very local property market. Hyper local!

Knowing what has actually sold, what's attracting buyers, which urbanisations are particularly sought after, which types of property are becoming difficult to find, and why one house may be worth considerably more than another a few streets away is where experience comes in. That's the information you get from being in the market every day.

So if you're looking at that 20.7% and wondering what it means for your own home, come and have a chat with us. We've been selling homes in Gran Alacant through very different property markets, and we're always happy to give you a realistic idea of where your property sits in today's market.

No inflated promises and no hard sell. Just an honest conversation about your home and what we're seeing here in Gran Alacant.

I ❤️ Gran Alacant

Source: Tinsa by Accumin, IMIE Mercados Locales, 2nd Quarter 2026, published 30 June 2026.