New-Build Spain: €77.58 Billion to 2031, and 70% of It Before 2028

Spain has €77.58 billion of new-build construction in the pipeline to 2031, and 70% of that investment is executed before 2028. If you are looking at new-build property on the Costa del Sol, that timetable matters more than the headline number: what is designed and financed today gets delivered within the next three years, and beyond that, supply depends on decisions nobody has taken yet.

How much will Spain build between now and 2031?

The figure comes from the latest report by EY-Parthenon's real estate team, which tracks building projects already identified across the country. The result: 53.2 million buildable square metres and €77.58 billion of associated investment between 2026 and 2031.

The interesting detail is how it is spread over time. It is not a smooth curve: it is a mountain peaking in 2027 with a very steep descent from 2028 onwards.

Why is almost everything concentrated in 2026 and 2027?

That table deserves an honest reading, because it lends itself to an alarmist headline that would not be accurate. The fact that only €1,656M appears in 2030 does not mean Spain will stop building: it means the 2030 projects do not yet exist on paper. The report counts what has already been identified, and a building takes years to go from land to permit and from permit to crane. The distant horizon always looks empty because it has not been filled in yet.

That said, the practical conclusion still holds, and it is the one that should interest a buyer. Everything delivered up to 2028 has already been decided: the projects exist, the plots have been bought and the financing is closed. What comes after that depends on planning approvals, available land and the regulatory framework of the coming years — three variables nobody can take for granted today. The report itself points to political and regulatory uncertainty, including delays to housing decrees, as the main brake on the institutional pipeline.

What is being built? Housing and hotels are 84% of it

The breakdown by segment explains rather well why this is local news and not just a national statistic:

• Classic residential: €36.10 billion, 46.5% of the total. By far the dominant block.
• Affordable housing: €17.64 billion, 22.7%. Almost a quarter of the pipeline is subsidised or price-capped housing.
• Hotels: €11.30 billion, 14.6%. A very high share for a single commercial use.
• The rest — offices, retail and logistics: around €12.55 billion, the remaining 16.2%.

Add residential and hotels together and you reach 83.8% of all planned investment. And those are precisely the two engines of the Costa del Sol: housing for residents and international investors, and hotel capacity for one of Europe's most established tourist destinations. When Spanish construction concentrates on housing and hotels, Malaga and its coastline sit squarely in the crosshairs.

What does this mean for new-build on the Costa del Sol?

The Costa del Sol has had a structural problem for years that no national figure solves: there is very little well-located, ready-to-build land. In Marbella, Estepona or Benahavís , new-build competes less for demand than for available square metres, and that is what sustains the price gap against the rest of the province.

These are the median asking prices we are seeing right now in our market report, calculated across 8,789 active listings and updated every month:

Note a detail that often goes unnoticed: Marbella has a higher price per square metre than Benahavís, but a lower overall median. This is not a contradiction, it is product mix. Benahavís sells large villas; Marbella sells everything, including two-bedroom apartments that pull the median down without lowering the unit price. That is why you should always read both columns together and never trust a headline built on a single number.

Costs rise 7.2% without building a single extra metre

This is probably the most revealing figure in the whole report. Planned buildable surface stays practically unchanged from the previous edition — just 0.1% less — yet the investment needed to build it rises by 7.2%. The same amount will be built and it will cost more: energy, materials, transport and supply chain.

For a buyer this translates into something very concrete: construction cost is a floor pushing upwards, not a ceiling. When someone tells you to wait for new-build prices to fall, they are asking steel and cement to get cheaper. The industry knows this, which is why the report insists on industrialisation, off-site construction, BIM and digitalisation: these are not fashions, they are the only real lever left to contain the final price.

The emissions factor and why it affects resale

The report calculates that executing this entire pipeline will generate 23.9 million tonnes of CO₂, and that low-carbon solutions could avoid 7.2 million of those, around 30%. Beyond the environmental headline, this has a wealth angle: European regulation tightens every year and energy efficiency has become a resale value factor, not an optional extra. A development delivered today with a strong energy rating will age far better than one built to the legal minimums of a decade ago.

What to do if you are thinking of buying off-plan

• Ask for the real delivery date, not the sales one. Developments completing in 2027 and 2028 are the ones inside the confirmed pipeline; those promising 2030 depend on permits that do not yet exist.
• Check the planning status before signing: building permit granted, bank guarantee on the amounts paid on account, and ten-year structural insurance. Without a permit in hand, the completion date is an intention, not a commitment.
• Compare against resale in the same area. With construction costs up 7.2%, in some municipalities a well-located renovated home works out better than waiting three years for a new build.
• Look at the projected energy rating and get it in writing. It is the factor that will most separate good product from mediocre product at the next resale.

Conclusion

The reading of these €77.58 billion is not that a wave of new-build is coming, nor that it is about to run out. It is that the bulk of what is guaranteed today gets delivered before 2028, that almost 70% of that investment is housing, that hotels carry a 14.6% weight no country without our tourism would show, and that all of it costs 7.2% more than a year ago without adding a single square metre.

On the Costa del Sol, where well-located land is the real bottleneck, that timetable is felt sooner than in the rest of Spain. If you are weighing up new-build in Marbella, Estepona, Mijas or Málaga and want to know what is genuinely on the market, permitted and dated, get in touch and we will go through it with you, with no obligation.

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