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Is Torrevieja cheaper than Alicante? What the official tables can and cannot compare

§ 1One row for Alicante, none for Torrevieja

Open the registrars' report for the second quarter of 2026, dated August 2026, at the table of average prices by province, and Alicante/Alacant has a row: €2,267 per m² for all homes. Turn to the table of capitales de provincia, the provincial capitals, and Alicante city has a row there as well, at €2,219 per m². Look for Torrevieja in either place and it is missing. The smallest places the report names are provinces and provincial capitals, so Torrevieja sits inside the province figure with every other town on the coast and inland.

That is the difficulty with the question people type into a search box. It asks for two town prices from one source, measured the same way, for the same kind of home in the same months. We went through the official tables that carry Spanish home prices and asked three things of each: the smallest place it names, what it counts and what it leaves out. No table we could open puts the two towns side by side. The chapter on the Costa Blanca towns and the checks that apply to each ranks none of them, and the tables below are the reason.

§ 2What each official table can name

Four official tables carry prices or sales for homes, and they stop at different places.

Only the last row reaches below provinces and capitals, and it is the table our tools could not open. Everything else stops at Alicante city, the province or the region.

§ 3Three Alicante figures that look like one

The registrars call their price the precio declarado por metro cuadrado de viviendas registradas, the declared price per square metre of registered homes. It comes from homes that reached the registry, not from adverts. The text we could read does not say whether the area is built or usable, because the methodology section sits beyond the part that opened for us. How a price per square metre is worked out from a deed shows why that matters, since the same flat can carry different areas on different documents.

Put €2,219 per m² for the city beside €2,267 per m² for the province and the city looks lower. That sets a twelve-month average beside a three-month one, in a market where the registrars report a year-on-year rise of 11.7% for the province and 13.3% for the city. The matching pair is the two twelve-month figures, €2,219 per m² for the city against €2,194 per m² for the province. On those, the city sits above the province by €25 per m², or about 1.1%. On a flat of 80 m² that is €2,000. The sums are ours, and the capitals table gives one figure per city, with no split between new and second-hand homes, as we read it.

Neither pair says anything about Torrevieja. It tells you how far apart a city and its own province are, and the next section shows how little of the province the city is.

§ 4How much of the province is Alicante city

The report also gives the city's share of the province's registered home purchases: 12.10% in the quarter and 12.29% in the year-on-year table. Against the province total of 12,298 purchases, the first share comes to about 1,490 purchases in the city and about 10,810 in the rest of the province. Torrevieja is somewhere among those about 10,810, along with Benidorm, Orihuela, Dénia, Calpe, Jávea and every inland town.

The foreign-buyer share has the same problem. The report gives 46.43% for the province, and the tables on the nationality of buyers are for Spain as a whole, so this report publishes no foreign share for a town. What the province share does let you do is bound the rest of the province. It is a weighted mix of the city and everything else, and the city is a small part of the weight. The report gives no foreign share for Alicante city, so the table below tries invented values for it. The sum weights the city by its 12.10% of purchases and the rest by what remains, and it assumes both percentages count the same purchases.

The extreme rows, a city with no foreign buyers and a city made up entirely of them, leave the rest of the province between about 39% and 53%. Alicante city moves the province figure very little, so the province share is mostly a statement about the other towns. That is still a long way from a statement about Torrevieja, which is one town in a blend of many.

§ 5Home type: the column that moves an average

The report splits purchases into new and second-hand for each province. In Alicante, 2,161 of the quarter's 12,298 purchases were new homes and 10,137 were second-hand, so new homes were about 18% of the total. For Spain, 34,919 of 167,934 were new, or about 21%. The mix differs from place to place, and the two prices differ a good deal: the province shows €2,780 per m² for new homes and €2,153 per m² for second-hand ones, so a new home costs about 29% more per square metre.

Suppose two towns charged exactly those two prices, and the only difference between them was the mix of new and second-hand homes sold. The towns are invented, so nobody has to defend a postcode.

Town A shows an average about €63 per m² above Town B, or about 2.8%, with no difference in what either type of home costs. That is more than twice the €25 per m² between Alicante city and its province in the previous section, so a mix effect can swamp the gap between two places.

The report also gives a national split by building type. Vivienda colectiva, the registrars' word for flats, was 78.97% of registered purchases and single-family homes were 21.03%, and the single-family share reaches 39.73% in Castilla-La Mancha. That compares regions. The contents list sections on housing type and on the size of flats sold, and the text we could read ended before them, so we cannot give the mix for Alicante, let alone for one town. If you are weighing a particular kind of home in Torrevieja, the note on buying property in Torrevieja lists the checks on community charges, licences and flood risk for the apartments and bungalows it describes.

§ 6The index and the transfer count stop higher up

The statistics office's house price index is the most quoted official series, and its geography is the shortest: autonomous communities and cities. For the second quarter of 2026 it gives 13.0% for the Valencian Community against 12.2% for Spain. It is an index (base 2025), so it follows how prices change and does not say what a home costs. How to read the national price index covers that difference.

Set it beside the registrars. For the same region their annual table gives 12.3% as the year-on-year change in the average declared price, so two official sources, one region and the same quarter-end give answers 0.7 points apart. They are built differently, and the periods they compare need not line up. A conclusion about a town drawn from either one would be invented.

The statistics office also publishes a count of registered transfers of property rights, and we read its August 2026 release, marked provisional. Its scope note says autonomous communities and provinces. It is compiled from registry records, so it is the same register seen from the statistics office and not a second opinion on a town. The notes on each official statistic explain how to keep these sources apart.

§ 7The ministry's table, and why we print no figure from it

The housing ministry publishes an appraisal-value statistic every quarter, and its methodology note says results are published for autonomous communities, provinces or municipalities. It describes a table of free-market homes in municipalities of more than 25,000 inhabitants, the only official table we found that goes below the province and the provincial capital. The figure is the valor tasado, the appraisal value, taken from the reports of appraisal companies and expressed in euros per m² of built area. The averages use finished homes or homes under rehabilitation only, and the statistic separates homes up to five years old from older ones.

We found the series linked from the ministry's page as a spreadsheet, and our reading tools could not open it. So we cannot tell you the latest quarter, whether it lists Torrevieja and Alicante, or what either figure is, and we print none. If you open it yourself, check three things before you compare: that both towns have a row, that the rows are for the same quarter and the same age band, and that you are not setting an appraisal value beside a registrars' price. The two are different measures. One starts from an appraiser's report on a home, the other from the price declared for a registered sale, and the registrars' text does not say which area it divides by.

Websites that publish an asking price for Torrevieja and another for Alicante are what most readers meet first. They are leads at best, because they sit outside the official sources this site works from and we did not read how they are built, so nothing from them appears here. A low figure for a town is also a different thing from good value. The chapter on affordable places and what a low average can mean explains that a low average can reflect weak demand or homes in poor condition as easily as a good price, which is a second reason a lower town figure, if you find one, does not settle the question.

§ 8What a price per square metre leaves out

Even two matching figures would leave out the bill after the price. Both towns lie in the Valencian Community, so the regional resale transfer tax is the same for both: the general rate for housing is 9% for transfers accrued from 1 June 2026, according to the Ministry of Finance table. The tax follows the region where the home stands and not the town. The impuesto sobre bienes inmuebles (IBI), the property tax, is different. It is a local tax, and each town council sets its rate within the legal limits, so the yearly bill on two homes of the same price can differ by town. Community charges in an urbanisation are set by that community of owners, and they vary from one urbanisation to the next.

The costs and risks that change with the setting, from flood exposure to services in the off-season, are in the chapter on how coast, village and city settings change what you check. None of them shows up in an average of declared prices.

§ 9Putting the question to the data

Pick one source and one period before you compare anything. For Alicante city against Alicante province, the registrars' two twelve-month figures are the matching pair. For two towns, only a table that names both will do, and the ministry's municipal table is the candidate: open it, find both rows, and read the same quarter and the same age band.

Write the unit beside every figure: declared price or appraisal value, per square metre of which area, all homes or new or second-hand, quarter or twelve months. Where a number is yours, a sum from two published ones, label it as yours and keep the inputs.

Save a dated copy of each table. Reports are revised and republished, and a seller who quotes a figure from memory is quoting a version you cannot check.

If you need the registry's words in a sentence, this one survives a sceptical reader: "In the second quarter of 2026, the registrars' twelve-month average declared price was €2,219 per m² for homes in Alicante city and €2,194 per m² for Alicante province, and the report has no figure for Torrevieja." It names the source, the period, the measure and the gap.

§ 10Questions to put to the professional

A town average cannot tell you what the home in front of you is worth, and no table replaces the checks on the home itself: the nota simple (the registry note), the survey and a lawyer's review of the title and the community accounts. These questions turn the tables above into something you can use.

• To the agent: which recent sales in the same building or urbanisation can you show, with the price in the deed, the date and whether the home was new or second-hand?
• To the agent: which area is the price per square metre divided by, built or usable, and does it include terraces?
• To the lawyer: what do the community accounts and the latest property tax receipt show, and are any charges unpaid?
• To an independent valuer: can you value this home against recent comparable sales in the same area, and say which sales you used?
• To yourself and the lawyer: which official table does the figure I was shown come from, for which period and for which place?

Dotted underline marks an illustrative figure. It shows how a calculation works and is not a quote, a rate or a forecast.

General information only. This is not legal, tax or financial advice. Check your own situation with a qualified adviser.