How long does it take to sell a property in Torrevieja and Orihuela Costa? 2026 data

We have been selling property in Torrevieja and Orihuela Costa since 1988. Over that time we have completed more than 5,000 transactions and seen every scenario: owners who priced correctly and sold within weeks, and owners who waited two years before accepting less than they would have achieved from the start. The difference is rarely the market or bad luck. It is almost always the listing price.

The real average selling time on the Costa Blanca south

A correctly priced property in this area sells in between 2 and 6 months in 2026. Not one week, not two years. Those extremes do exist, but they are always explained by the same single factor.

The zones with the highest international demand — La Zenia, Playa Flamenca, Punta Prima, Cabo Roig — tend toward the lower end of that range. An apartment in Zeniamar or La Ciñuelica at the market price rarely sits for more than 3 or 4 months without a serious offer. The most sought-after properties — seafront penthouses, villas with private pools in prime positions, corner apartments with sea views — sometimes sell within weeks when priced accurately.

Inland urbanisations and lesser-known developments typically take longer, usually 4 to 8 months for a correctly priced property. This does not mean they are harder to sell; it reflects a smaller pool of active buyers at any given moment.

Seasonality: when is your buyer actually looking?

The international buyer on the Costa Blanca moves in fairly predictable cycles. The two most active periods are January to May and September to October.

The first group are those who made the decision in November or December to change their life and are now searching in earnest in the new year. The second window is the return from summer holidays: the trip to Spain is fresh in memory, the decision no longer gets postponed, and buyers start making serious enquiries.

June, July and August see buyers in the market, but volume drops noticeably. The northern European buyer is on holiday, not buying property. If you list at the right price in October, you should expect serious enquiries through the last quarter and well into the following spring. Listing in August at an inflated price is just about the least favourable combination possible.

Five factors that genuinely speed up a sale

Price, as already mentioned. But from 35 years in this market, we know these five things make a measurable difference to how quickly an offer arrives.

Professional photography. Buyers from the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium search online before they board a plane. If the photos are dark, cluttered, or look like they were taken on an old phone, the property gets dismissed in two seconds. We have watched buyer behaviour on portals for decades and this is not an exaggeration.

Advertising on the right portals. The buyer relevant to this market is not only on Rightmove Spain. They are on Kyero, A Place in the Sun, Dutch and German property portals. A property that only appears on Spanish sites simply does not exist for a large share of its potential audience.

An agency that speaks your buyer's language. If the interested party is Dutch or French and calls with questions, they need to speak to someone in their language. At Bennecke we handle enquiries in Spanish, English, French and Russian every day. Losing an enquiry to a language barrier translates directly into lost offers.

Furnished and presentable. A furnished apartment sells faster than an empty one. An empty property forces the buyer to mentally fill it with furniture, and many simply will not do that exercise. Clean, with basic functional furniture, and with nothing that suggests the place has been untouched for years.

Available for viewings without friction. A buyer flying in from London for a long weekend wants to see four or five properties in two days. If yours requires 48 hours notice and only available in the mornings, it will not make the list.

The overpricing trap: the most expensive mistake a seller makes

We see the same pattern repeat itself every year. A seller lists at a price because "a neighbour sold for that three years ago" or "I want room to negotiate". The property sits for months without offers. After six months, they reduce by 5%. After twelve months, another 5%. By the time eighteen months have passed, buyers have been watching those repeated reductions and start wondering what is wrong with the property.

The usual outcome: they sell two years later at a price 15 to 20 percent lower than what they would have achieved by pricing correctly from day one, and they have also lost two years of time and stress in the process.

A well-priced property from the start generates multiple enquiries, creates a sense of urgency among buyers, and almost always closes close to the asking price. The "leaving room to negotiate" theory almost always works against the seller.

After the offer: how long until completion?

Accepting an offer is not the end of the process. From that point, the typical timeline in our area works as follows.

The arras contract (reservation deposit) is signed within 7 to 14 days of verbal acceptance. The buyer pays 10% of the purchase price at this stage. Both parties are now committed, and backing out carries a financial penalty for whoever walks away.

Completion at the notary typically happens 6 to 10 weeks after the arras. Cash purchases close faster. When the buyer is arranging a Spanish mortgage as a non-resident, add another 4 to 6 weeks of bank processing.

In total: from accepted offer to keys in hand, 2 to 3 months in the majority of cases.

How long would yours take to sell?

If you are thinking about selling your property in Torrevieja or Orihuela Costa, the first step is an honest market valuation — not the one that tells you what you want to hear, but the one that reflects what similar properties are actually achieving right now. We will also give you a realistic estimate of how long your property should take to sell based on its zone, condition and current demand.

Get in touch with Bennecke. Thirty-five years in this market, a multilingual team, and more than 5,000 properties sold. We do not guess — we give you real data and straight answers.