Property in Pilar de la Horadada: an inland town and two coastal settlements

The municipality covers 78 km², running from low hills near the Sierra de Escalona down to a little over four kilometres of coastline. The land in between is greenhouses and flower fields — the town hall itself manages irrigation across roughly 60 km². This is still a farming municipality that happens to have six Blue Flag beaches, not a resort with a few fields left over. That is what keeps the place going all year: the Friday market and the ordinary shops in the inland centre run on a local economy based on agriculture rather than tourism.

The inland centre (Zona Pueblo) holds the town hall, the schools and the health centre, with around 15,000 residents. There is no old quarter there — and none anywhere else in the municipality either: Pilar only separated from Orihuela in 1986, and even the parish church dates from the 1980s. The architecture is uniformly new and functional.

Torre de la Horadada is the coastal settlement, grown around its watchtower of 1591 and a 539-berth marina. Restaurants and shops cluster by the port, and in summer the rhythm here is noticeably more international and more crowded. Mil Palmeras, slightly further north, is smaller and quieter: a palm-lined promenade, one 535-metre Blue Flag beach, no marina of its own and, by local accounts, almost no evening life. Inland among the hills there is also Pinar de Campoverde — larger plots, villas with pools and its own Sunday market.

The whole municipality had 24,316 residents in 2025, up from 23,844 a year earlier. Most of them — about 15,000 — are in the inland centre. Torre de la Horadada has roughly 3,240 registered residents, Mil Palmeras 955 and Pinar de Campoverde 3,480. Torre de la Horadada's population is reported to multiply several times over in summer.

On the 2022 population-register breakdown, 40.8% of residents were born outside Spain — but this is not the usual Northern European retirement picture. The largest group was British (2,762), closely followed by Moroccan (1,957), then Romanian (710) and Ecuadorian (671); Morocco, Romania and Ecuador together outnumber the British group. Behind that are the greenhouses and the flower growing, not the beaches. No more recent nationality breakdown has been published.

Along the coastal strip at Torre de la Horadada and Mil Palmeras, two- and three-bedroom apartments and bungalows dominate, aimed at the holiday-let and retirement markets at once. Inland — in Pinar de Campoverde and around the Lo Romero golf course — the stock gets larger: semi-detached houses and detached villas with pools on bigger plots, alongside a steady supply of building plots. New-build activity continues, and land is a visible segment of the market in its own right here.

On price levels: idealista's review from April 2025 put the average asking price at €2,976 per m². The same portal's price index appears to show around €3,363 by June 2026, a 5.3% year-on-year rise — but that page could not be opened directly, so that figure is an indication rather than a confirmed fact. The direction is up; the size of the move is less certain, because in a municipality this small a portal's average rests on few listings.

To the south the municipality borders the Región de Murcia, and the line is within reach: the El Mojón settlement and beach sit in the municipality's southern corner, while immediately across the boundary, in San Pedro del Pinatar, a settlement and beach of the same name are already in a different autonomous community. For a buyer that is three practical differences.

Transfer tax. In the Valencian Community, which is where all of Pilar de la Horadada sits, ITP on a resale home is currently 9% (reduced from 10% for deeds from 2025), with 6% for buyers under 35 and certain other groups. In Murcia the same tax is 7.75% (reduced from 8% for deeds from 25 July 2025), with reduced rates of 3–4%. On a resale that is real money, but only south of the line.

Holiday letting. In Valencia this runs through the VT register; in Murcia through a separate VV.MU. system, which adds an NRUA entry at the Property Registry, liability insurance of at least €300,000 and 60% owner approval in apartment buildings. A licence from one region has no standing in the other.

Health service. The municipality belongs to the Torrevieja health department and the Valencian system; across the border the Servicio Murciano de Salud operates instead.