You have decided to build your own house rather than buy one already standing. In Spain that route has its own name — autopromoción, or self-build — and it brings a handful of decisions with it. This article deals with the first of them, and the one you cannot undo: choosing a building plot.
Finding the right one is part instinct and part arithmetic. You need to like the place, and you need it to work. It comes down to a balance, and to knowing yourself well enough to be honest about how you actually live.
Location and lifestyle:
Start with how you relate to your surroundings. What do you genuinely need within reach, day to day? Work, schools, the shops, the airport, a hospital, public transport. Mark the areas that suit you on a map and search there, rather than everywhere. On the Costa del Sol this matters more than people expect. A plot inland from Málaga costs less than one in Torremolinos or Benalmádena, and the saving is real. So is the drive, twice a day, for the next twenty years. Beyond the cost of building, work out what it costs to live there: in time, in money and in comfort.
Physical characteristics and what you need:
You cannot move a house once it is built, unless you happen to live in a caravan. Access, running costs and a family that may grow all have to be thought through when you choose the plot, not afterwards. A sloping site will usually give you better views than a flat one. It will also give you steps, retaining walls and a garden you use rather less. Orientation is the cheapest energy measure you will ever buy. Good design can make the most of a plot, but the way that plot sits on the hill is fixed on the day you sign. So set your real requirements against the ground — room by room, square metre by square metre — and check that what you want to build actually fits.
Budget:
The two questions above are budget questions as well. We looked at what a house really costs to build in an earlier article (in Spanish). The price per square metre swings widely from one area to another. Add what the plot itself contributes to that figure. A narrow access lane, a steep gradient, nowhere to stand a crane, poor ground, a long connection to mains services: none of that shows up in the asking price, and all of it shows up in the builder’s quote.
Planning rules:
Last, and probably the most decisive of the four: what are you legally allowed to build there? However much you have set your heart on a plot, Spanish planning law has its own opinion, and its opinion wins. The rules sit in the municipal plan — the Plan General de Ordenación Urbanística, or PGOU. It fixes the buildable floor area (edificabilidad), the height and number of storeys, the setbacks to the boundaries, the permitted use and the type of building allowed. Occasionally it tells you that you cannot build at all. Spain has no direct equivalent of the outline planning application. What you do instead is ask the town hall for a planning certificate on that specific plot (cédula urbanística or informe urbanístico) — before you buy, not after. Planning permission itself (licencia de obras) comes much later, once there is a design to submit. Rural land marketed as building land is where overseas buyers tend to get caught out.
Our recommendation, as always, is to bring in a specialist before you sign, not after. There are a lot of variables, and checking them in advance saves money, time and a fair amount of grief. Reading a plot properly is a couple of days’ work. Finding out what was wrong with it after completion costs rather more.
