Property for sale in Benitachell

Buying a house in Benitachell means buying in a municipality with two very different kinds of terrain. The village, officially El Poble Nou de Benitatxell, sits inland on a gently sloping plateau, with supermarket, pharmacy, primary school and health post a few hundred metres away. Towards the sea the Serra de la Llorença climbs to over four hundred metres and then falls steeply into the sea; Cumbre del Sol lies on those slopes. The coast is cliffs and a few coves, of which only Cala del Moraig can be reached by car. So buying here means choosing between village and mountain.

In the village you live on gentle ground, with daily amenities on foot. Cumbre del Sol is a large urbanisation on the steep slopes above the sea, a few kilometres by road from the village, with its own shops, a pharmacy and the British school. The countryside has rural partidas with scattered houses. Mind the boundary: Cumbre del Sol borders Jávea and is often advertised under that name or under Moraira, but it belongs to Benitachell. The name Lluca also occurs in both municipalities.

In Cumbre del Sol almost everything for sale is villas, new builds alongside older homes, with the odd flat. In the village it is mainly flats and village houses, in the countryside rural homes on larger plots. With an older villa on the steep slopes, the retaining walls, drainage and access deserve extra attention; also check whether extensions are on the register. On the coast at Moraig, stricter building rules apply. Read more about life zone by zone on Living in Benitachell.

Benitachell suits people looking for quiet and views, and families with children at the British school, which is in Cumbre del Sol itself. It suits those who want to live without a car or walk to the sea from the village less well. Two points are easy to miss. The council has declared the tap water unfit for drinking because of too much salt, and tops it up with desalinated water from Jávea; ask how things stand now. And a large forest fire, which went on to reach Jávea, started on the ridge above Cumbre del Sol; with a villa on the edge of the woods, look at the vegetation and the access road.

The British school is on a single campus in Cumbre del Sol, for children from toddlers to eighteen. The village has a health post and an ambulance is based there; the public hospital for the area is in Dénia. At Cala del Moraig, visitors pay for parking in summer and a shuttle bus runs. The coastal tram stops in Teulada and Gata de Gorgos, not in Benitachell. Alicante airport is a good hour’s drive away. To the south lies Moraira, with a marina.