Marbella has been running its property market under an urban plan written in 1986. That changed on 22 February 2026, when the regional housing authority of the Junta de Andalucía issued a favourable report on the city's new Plan General de Ordenación Municipal — the PGOM — and formally transmitted it to Marbella town hall, clearing the path to a final plenary vote that turns the framework into law. With that approval, Marbella becomes the first municipality in Andalusia to bring its town-level planning into line with the 2021 regional law known as LISTA, the Ley de Impulso para la Sostenibilidad del Territorio de Andalucía.
For a buyer trying to read what is actually happening to prices, supply and certainty in the most internationally watched town on the Costa del Sol, this is the most consequential single piece of news of the year. It is also, on its own, not quite the moment the market changes shape. The PGOM is a strategic framework, not a building permit. The detailed plan that will decide what can be built where — the POU, the Plan de Ordenación Urbana — comes next, and is not expected to be in force until 2027 or 2028. The February approval is both a milestone and a starting gun, and the difference between those two things is where the property opportunity actually sits.
Forty years on the 1986 PGOU
Marbella's planning saga has been one of the longer-running stories in Spanish municipal life. The 1986 PGOU governed land use through the booms and busts of the 1990s and 2000s. A revised plan, drafted under the city's previous administration, was passed in 2010 — and then, in 2015, annulled in its entirety by Spain's Supreme Court, which found that the correct legal procedure had not been followed during its drafting. Overnight, the city was forced to revert to the 1986 rules. Roughly four decades on, that older plan was still in force the morning the Junta issued its February report.
The limbo was not abstract. Thousands of homes built or licensed under the 2010 plan were left with disputed classifications. Owners struggled to register or sell properties whose planning status had quietly become contested. Developers in affected zones could not file new licences with any confidence the rules would hold. For a town in which roughly one in three residents is a foreign national, the practical effect was a steady drag on investor confidence — papered over by the strength of international demand, but visible to anyone reading a tricky title report.
Mayor Ángeles Muñoz called the February approval "magnificent news" and said it had been achieved "in record time" through close collaboration between the city and the regional government. The PGOM has been designed specifically inside the LISTA procedural framework, partly to insulate it from the kind of challenge that brought down the 2010 plan. The first-in-Andalusia distinction is technical, but it matters: it signals that the new framework has been written to pass the legal test the previous one failed.
What the PGOM actually does
A PGOM is, in essence, the strategic land-use map of a Spanish municipality. It classifies land — urban, developable, undevelopable — sets the broad framework for zoning, density and use, designates green and protected spaces, and aligns transport corridors and sustainability rules with regional law. It does not, by itself, grant the right to build on any particular plot, but it defines the universe of what will be possible once the detailed implementation plans are in place.
In Marbella's case, the new plan opens up additional development potential in San Pedro de Alcántara, Nueva Andalucía, Las Chapas and parts of central Marbella — areas where supply has been visibly tight relative to demand. It also tackles one of the more uncomfortable legacies of the 2015 annulment: a route to regularise the legal status of properties caught between the two annulled regimes. For owners of affected homes, this is the part of the PGOM that is most likely to matter directly to their day-to-day ownership.
For brand-new construction, the immediate effect is more modest. The PGOM determines what kind of development is permissible at the strategic level — what an architect can credibly draft, what a developer can credibly underwrite. It is the POU, layered underneath, that will issue the granular rules — exact plot densities, height limits, set-backs, and the local regulations that allow a specific building licence to be filed on a specific piece of land.
The POU is the plan that will really shape what gets built
Until the POU is approved — currently expected somewhere between 2027 and 2028 — Marbella will operate under a hybrid regime. The PGOM provides the strategic certainty. Day-to-day permits will continue to be issued under transitional rules that draw, where necessary, on what remained workable from the older frameworks. For property buyers, this is the part of the calendar that matters most. The market does not move from limbo to a fully renewed planning environment in February 2026. It moves to a clearer strategic horizon now, and a fully operational implementation regime roughly two to three years from now.
A useful preview of how Marbella will manage that interim period sits in the town hall's announcement, in July 2025, of roughly €67 million in planning licences directed at residential development. The releases were selective and concentrated — most of the package landed on a small number of carefully chosen schemes in Nueva Andalucía, together comprising close to 100 new homes. In a municipality that absorbs many multiples of that figure each year, this was supply chosen deliberately, not unlocked en masse. The expectation should be more of the same until the POU is in force.
Why the supply story will move slowly
The pricing data through the first quarter of 2026 leaves little doubt about how tight the Marbella market remains. Idealista's March 2026 price report put the municipal average asking price at €6,260 per square metre, an annual rise of 8.59%. Inside the prime zones the figures are higher again: the Nagüeles–Milla de Oro area averaged €6,789/m² in February, with Los Monteros reaching €8,772/m² and Nueva Andalucía hitting a historical high of €5,654/m². Independent appraiser Tinsa's verified sale-price index for Marbella showed an annual increase of 20.53% in Q1 2026, reaching €3,641/m² — well ahead of the Andalusian regional rate of 10.3%, according to Tinsa's published series. These are not the numbers of a market on the verge of softening from new supply.
The contrast with Estepona, ten kilometres to the west, is instructive. The neighbouring municipality has spent several years streamlining its planning process and has become the Costa del Sol's busiest new-build market in 2026, with more than fifty live projects in progress — a dynamic explored in detail in our Estepona new-build analysis. Marbella's deliberately tighter supply has, if anything, widened the price gap between the two towns over that period rather than narrowing it. The PGOM, and the POU that follows, will not reverse this overnight. Over the second half of the decade they will gradually relieve some of the pressure, but the planning machine produces homes in years, not quarters, and a buyer should plan around that calendar rather than anticipate it.
Industry forecasts reflect the same picture. The Agency Marbella, quoted by Idealista in March 2026, expects Marbella property prices to rise by between 7% and 8% in 2026 — a step down from roughly 12% the year before, but still firmly positive growth driven by structural international demand and a supply pipeline that even a freshly approved PGOM cannot accelerate quickly. The market is maturing, not cooling.
Reading the PGOM as a property buyer
For most buyers, the most important practical consequence of the PGOM has nothing to do with where the next development goes up. It is the restoration of basic legal certainty across the Marbella property base. A property that ten years ago required pages of legal context to explain its planning status can, after the new framework takes effect, be classified, registered and traded under coherent rules. That is a quietly enormous shift for the resale market, and especially for buyers considering older properties on plots that were caught up in the 2010 plan's annulment.
The corollary is that the burden on a buyer's due diligence does not disappear — it changes shape. Before the PGOM, the question was whether a property fell into the cracks left by the planning saga. After the PGOM, the question is which transitional regime applies to the specific plot or building you are buying, and how it will be reclassified under the new framework. That is technical, varies by zone, and is not a question to answer from a brochure. It is the kind of detail a qualified Spanish abogado or gestor will read out of a current cédula urbanística — the formal certificate of urban planning status — for the property in question.
For new-build buyers the message is more straightforward. Existing licensed projects continue on their original timetables — the PGOM does not pause work that already had permission — and developers with valid licences will complete and deliver as planned. Off-plan and recently completed stock currently for sale across Marbella is the part of the market least disrupted by the new framework. Our live Marbella listings reflect that reality. Buyers comparing Marbella with neighbouring markets will also find our coverage of the prime tier, including the recent Marbella branded-residence boom, useful context for understanding which end of the supply pipeline is moving today and which will take time to arrive.
As with any planning-sensitive transaction in Spain, we strongly recommend independent legal advice on the precise urbanistic status of any home before signing — particularly during this transitional period and particularly for properties dating from before 2015 or located in zones affected by the annulled 2010 plan.
The shape of the next decade
The Marbella story over the next ten years will be written in three layers. The visible top — the Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana and Lamborghini-branded schemes — will continue to set headlines while occupying a thin sliver of the supply pipeline. Estepona will keep delivering the bulk of the western coast's new homes through 2026 and 2027, as it has been doing. And the deepest, slowest shift will happen quietly inside Marbella itself, as the PGOM and its successor POU restore the planning machinery that builds — and re-builds — the city. None of the three is independent of the others, and the buyer who reads all three together has a clearer view of where Marbella property value sits in 2026 than most agents will offer.
If you are weighing a Marbella purchase against neighbouring markets in 2026, browse the current Domosmar new-build and resale homes on Costa del Sol or speak directly to our team for a grounded, buyer-led shortlist matched to your budget, timing and the specific planning context of the homes you are considering.
