Property in Finestrat: the hill village and the coast are not the same place

The municipality covers 42 km², running from the Puig Campana massif — 1,410 m, or 1,406 m depending on the source, the province's second-highest peak — down to a short strip of coast. That whole coastline is a single cove, wedged between Benidorm and Villajoyosa. The mountain's slopes have been a protected landscape since 2006: pine forest and limestone, with the notch known as El Portell visible from far off.

The old village keeps its own pace, and from most of it you cannot see the sea at all. Its oldest lanes — Darrere Cases, Alcoi, Figueretes, Puig Campana — are currently being rebuilt, a municipal investment of roughly a million euros.

Cala de Finestrat is another thing entirely. It is the direct continuation of Benidorm's southern end: the same apartment blocks run across the boundary, TRAM Line 1 stops beside the La Marina shopping centre, and the N-332 and the AP-7 run along the foot of the hillside. That hillside is Sierra Cortina — new-build towers and villas terraced upward, some still under cranes, with Terra Mítica's rides visible in places. Quieter is Balcón de Finestrat – Terra Marina: bungalows, townhouses and apartments, under eight kilometres from the beach.

The register puts Finestrat somewhere around 9,400–10,000 residents: INE data gives 9,352 at the start of 2024, while 2025 compilations give 9,919 and 9,980. All of them agree on the direction. In 1990 about 1,200 people lived here — the population has grown roughly eightfold, and almost all of that growth has gone into the coastal and hillside new-build zones rather than the old village.

Around half the residents hold a foreign nationality: the 2025 breakdown shows 4,938 Spanish nationals against 5,042 foreign ones. By individual country, the two largest groups in the 2022 register were Russia (583) and the United Kingdom (523), ahead of Argentina, Romania and Bulgaria. That is a more Russian-speaking mix than the traditionally British- and Scandinavian-dominated stretches of this coast.

How far the population contracts over winter we could not confirm — figures for Finestrat are not published separately from the wider Benidorm conurbation.

Three kinds of thing come up for sale. New-build two- and three-bedroom apartments and penthouses in Sierra Cortina and around Cala de Finestrat, a good share of them still under construction. Detached villas, townhouses and bungalows in Balcón de Finestrat and the other hillside urbanisations. And a small stock of old-town houses, some renovated, some not.

On price per square metre, the public indices do not agree with each other. In mid-2026 Fotocasa showed €3,824/m², RealAdvisor's transaction-based figure put the median at €3,186/m² (apartments €3,036, houses €3,378), and Hogaria's resale-only series came out at €2,433/m². On direction they agree: RealAdvisor logged +14.4% for apartments and +10.7% for houses over twelve months. Treat these as a range, not a price.

Short-term letting requires registration as a tourist dwelling (VUT). Decree-law 9/2024 demands, among other things, a favourable municipal compatibility report and proof that the community of owners' bylaws do not prohibit tourist use — in several newer Sierra Cortina blocks, they do.

Finestrat is the only town we cover on the northern Costa Blanca, in the Marina Baixa. The other nine lie roughly a hundred kilometres south; Alicante city itself is 42 km away, about 34 minutes on the AP-7. This is not a neighbouring area — it is a different coast.

In practice, north means terrain first. There is no flat hinterland: the mountain begins behind the village and everything new is built on a slope. That is where the real trade-off comes from — plenty of view, about 270 m of coastline in total, and a beach you drive to rather than walk to.

On price and buyer profile, the usual summary is that the north is dearer and draws people who come for the view, while the south is flatter, cheaper and has larger British and Nordic retiree communities. We could not find any source giving numbers for that specifically against Finestrat, so treat it as a rule of thumb rather than a fact. What is verified is Finestrat's own nationality breakdown — and there the two largest groups are Russian and British, not British alone.