New Apartments · Benahavís, Málaga
Price: €1,495,000
The Sky Marbella Apartments: 50 homes of 129 to 402 m2 with private pools at the top of La Quinta, Benahavís, from €1,495,000. Delivery 2027.
Delivery: 2027
Fifty apartments occupy the curved, terraced blocks that step down the western edge of La Alborada, the highest developed ground in the La Quinta urbanisation, inside the municipality of Benahavís. They share the gates, the perimeter and the security arrangement with sixteen detached villas, but they are a different proposition entirely, and this page is about them. Homes run from 129 to 402 square metres of interior with two to five bedrooms, and the mix is deliberately laddered: ground floor duplexes opening onto private gardens, single level apartments on the middle floors, and duplex penthouses under the planted roof terraces. The developer is Rivestia Costa del Sol, the Spanish arm of the Swiss Rivestia group. The scheme came to market in March 2024, construction is under way, and apartment prices start at 1,495,000 euros.
The argument for buying an apartment rather than a house on this hillside is mostly about what sits underneath the homes. The residents' level holds an indoor heated pool, a gym with room for equipment and mat work, a sauna and a lobby at the entrance, and outside there is a large communal pool set in landscaped gardens. None of that exists at a private villa unless you build it yourself and then pay to run it every month of the year. Each apartment still has its own pool, on the terrace or in the garden, so the private and the communal do not compete for the same job. Underfloor heating runs through every room including the bathrooms, which matters more than buyers expect at this altitude in January. Two spaces in the underground garage and a private storeroom come with each home, and lifts run from the garage to every floor.
Day to day life here runs through three centres, none of them more than about ten minutes down the hill. Guadalmina Alta, at the bottom of the same road, is where most residents do the practical part of the week: a Supercor, a cluster of pharmacies, dental and veterinary practices, hardware, and a handful of Spanish restaurants that stay open through the winter rather than shuttering in October. San Pedro de Alcántara, a few minutes further west, is the fuller version, with the boulevard built on the roof of the buried A-7, a municipal market, banks, the Mercadona and Lidl on the ring road, and a working high street that does not depend on tourism. Nueva Andalucía to the east adds the Centro Plaza complex and the Saturday morning street market beside the bullring, which is the closest thing this stretch of coast has to a weekly social fixture.
The beaches are closer than the elevation suggests. Guadalmina beach sits at the mouth of the river of the same name, roughly twelve minutes down, and is the quiet option: wide grey sand, two or three chiringuitos, and the Roman baths and the early Christian basilica of Vega del Mar a short walk inland from the sand. San Pedro's beach and its paseo marítimo come next along the coast, and the Senda Litoral boardwalk now links long stretches of this shoreline, which makes an early morning walk or run possible without going anywhere near the A-7. East of the port, Playa de Levante and the sand in front of Puerto Banús are where the beach clubs and the summer noise are concentrated. Between the two extremes, the beach at Guadalmina is the one owners on this hill actually use in July.
Sport is what keeps this address busy out of season. The 27 holes of La Quinta run down the slope immediately below the site, and the Real Club de Golf Guadalmina, with its Sur and Norte courses, is about ten minutes away on the coastal plain. Slightly further west, Atalaya Golf and El Paraíso are both inside fifteen minutes, and the Villa Padierna courses are a similar run. Racquet sports have arrived in force on this side of Marbella: the Westin La Quinta at the foot of the access road runs tennis and padel alongside its spa, and San Pedro has several padel clubs whose evening leagues fill up months ahead. Inland, the A-397 towards Ronda is one of the most used road cycling climbs on the coast, and the river pools at the Charca de las Mozas, below Benahavís village, are about twenty minutes from the gates.
What makes this scheme unusual is not the address, it is the product at the address. La Quinta has plenty of apartments, but almost all of them were built between the late 1980s and the mid 2000s: three storey blocks with pitched tile roofs, modest window openings, no underfloor heating and often no lift. Anything at this height in a curved contemporary block, with full height glazing, a private pool to every home and a residents' spa level below, is effectively new to this market. That is the structural argument behind the pricing. A buyer at 1,495,000 euros is not paying a premium over comparable stock, because comparable stock does not really exist between Guadalmina Alta and the boundary of El Madroñal. The nearest genuine equivalents are further down the hill, closer to the coast, with a main road between them and the water.
The blocks face south and slightly west, which is why almost every image of this place is shot at the end of the day. From the terraces the ground drops through the golf course into Nueva Andalucía and then across to the bay of Marbella, with Gibraltar and the coast of Africa visible on a clear day. Behind the buildings the slope runs straight into the protected woodland of the Sierra de las Nieves, a national park since 2021, which is the practical guarantee that nothing will be built into the view. Height also changes the weather. It is cooler here in August than down on the sand, the afternoon breeze reaches this elevation most days, and the humidity that makes the coastal strip heavy in July is noticeably thinner. In our experience that combination, an outward view nobody can build on and a summer you can sit outside in, is what turns a second home into a first one.
Prices run from 1,495,000 euros to 4,950,000 euros. Interiors are between 129 and 402 square metres, with two to five bedrooms and a matching number of bathrooms, and every home carries substantial terrace area on top of that interior figure. The spread reflects the floor as much as the footprint: the ground floor duplexes with gardens and the duplex penthouses under the roof sit at either end of the range, with the middle floor apartments between them. Those figures are before purchase taxes and costs, which are set out further down this page. Stock here moves week to week, so the honest answer to what is left is whatever the developer's live availability list says on the day you ask. Request it from us.
Three, and they live very differently from one another. The ground floor homes are duplexes that open onto private gardens, which suits families and anyone who wants outdoor space at ground level without taking on a whole villa plot. The middle floor apartments are single level, with the entire living side glazed and a deep covered terrace running along it, and they are the easiest of the three to lock up and leave. The duplex penthouses take the top two levels and the roof terrace, and the largest homes in the scheme, at the 402 square metre end, sit here. The typologies do not sell evenly, so ask us which of the three has genuine availability before you settle on one.
Yes. The developer applies it to every unit in the apartment phase, and it is the single feature that separates this scheme from almost every other apartment development at this price level on the coast. Ground floor homes take theirs in the private garden. Middle floor and penthouse homes take theirs on the terrace. That is in addition to the large landscaped communal pool in the gardens and the indoor heated pool on the residents' level, so nobody is choosing between having a pool of their own and having facilities.
Everything in the images except the loose furniture, the art and the curtains. Kitchens are fully fitted with integrated appliances. Bathrooms are finished in natural stone with an ensuite to every bedroom. Wardrobes are bespoke rather than off the shelf, underfloor heating runs through the whole home including the bathroom floors, the air conditioning is hot and cold, and the glazing is high performance double glazed. Each home comes with two spaces in the underground garage and a private storeroom. The interiors are specified by Gunni & Trentino. Ask us for the memoria de calidades, the schedule of qualities attached to the contract, and read the appliance brands and the stone specifications in it rather than the adjectives around them.
An indoor heated pool, a gym with room for equipment and mat work, a sauna, a lobby at the entrance, a large outdoor pool set in landscaped gardens, and lifts running from the underground garage to every floor. The whole enclave is gated with 24 hour security, shared with the villa phase. In practice the indoor pool and the gym are the two that get used from November to March, and that is precisely when a hillside apartment either works as a home or turns out to be a summer flat.
We are publishing 2027, and no month. The reason is that the two phases of this scheme have been quoted with different completion dates at different points in the sales cycle, and we will not put a quarter on a page when the sources disagree. What you should do instead is ask, in writing, for the completion date written into the purchase contract, the penalty that applies if the developer misses it, and the licence reference for the works. Contracts bind. Sales material does not. The project holds planning permission and construction is under way.
No figure has been set yet. Community budgets on new schemes are agreed close to handover, once the built areas are measured and the security, lift and pool maintenance contracts are priced, so any number circulating before that is an estimate rather than a quote. What we can describe is the shape of it. An apartment here will pay more per month than a villa on the same site, because the apartment owners fund the indoor pool, the gym, the sauna, the lobby and the lifts. It will also cost far less in total, because the community carries the gardens, the building fabric and the plant, and a terrace pool costs a fraction of a garden pool to run. Ask us for the developer's draft budget when you reach the reservation stage.
Two taxes apply to a new home sold by its developer: IVA, Spanish value added tax, at 10 per cent of the price, and AJD stamp duty, currently 1.2 per cent in Andalucía. Notary, land registry and your own lawyer typically add between 1 and 1.5 per cent, so 12 to 13 per cent over the purchase price is a safe planning figure. The part specific to off plan is the payment structure. You pay in instalments against the build programme, and Spanish law requires every euro handed over before completion to be held in a dedicated account and covered by a bank guarantee or an insurance policy in your name. If a developer cannot produce that guarantee, that is the moment to stop and take advice. Rates and reliefs move, so have a Spanish lawyer confirm the current position for your own circumstances.
Yes, and most buyers at this scheme do. You will need a NIE, the Spanish foreigner identification number, which a lawyer can obtain on your behalf, and a Spanish bank account for the staged payments. The usual sequence is a reservation deposit that takes the unit off the market for a fixed short period, then a private purchase contract carrying the payment schedule and the bank guarantee, then the instalments against the build programme, then completion in front of a notary with the balance and the taxes. If you cannot travel for the notary appointment, a power of attorney granted to your lawyer handles it. Instruct an independent Spanish lawyer, not one introduced by the seller, and do it before you sign the reservation rather than after.
The lock and leave case is the strongest single argument for these apartments over the villas on the same site. There is no garden to irrigate, no plot to patrol and no large pool plant to service, and a gated community with 24 hour security watches the building while you are elsewhere. On letting: anything under the short term holiday regime must be registered with the Junta de Andalucía as a vivienda con fines turísticos and carry its licence number in any advertising, and the community statutes for this enclave may condition or restrict it, so have them read before you commit. Long term letting sits outside that regime and needs no tourist licence. We publish no yield projections. How rental income is taxed depends on where you are resident, so take advice from someone who understands both jurisdictions.
The realistic shortlist is short, because the options all sit within about a fifteen minute radius at the bottom of the hill. Laude San Pedro International College is the closest, in San Pedro de Alcántara, taking children from nursery to eighteen on a combined British and Spanish curriculum. Aloha College in Nueva Andalucía is the other obvious candidate and runs the English national curriculum to A Level alongside the International Baccalaureate. Both operate bus routes that serve the La Quinta side of the hill, and it is worth confirming the stop for your specific block before you commit, because driving down and back up this road at eight in the morning is a genuine daily consideration. Places at the better known schools go early in the admissions cycle, so register interest well ahead of completion rather than after it.
Puerto Banús is about ten minutes down the hill and San Pedro de Alcántara about the same to the west, which puts the marina, the shops and the restaurants within a short drive rather than an expedition. For flights, the run to Málaga Costa del Sol is a little under an hour on the AP-7 toll motorway, longer in the first fortnight of August when the coast road backs up. Gibraltar is a shorter drive in the other direction and suits private aviation and a handful of UK carriers. Most owners here use Málaga for scheduled flights and Gibraltar when the timing happens to work. The junction onto the A-7 sits a few minutes below the gates, which is the detail that matters when you land at eleven at night and want to be indoors twenty minutes later.