Inland / Hillside Properties for Sale

One Marbella developer has put three fashion houses on the deeds of homes along a single stretch of the Golden Mile. Fendi Casa furnishes the apartments at Epic; Dolce & Gabbana is finishing 92 residences a short way inland at Design Hills; and five villas nearby carry the name of Karl Lagerfeld. All three were built by the same company, and all three sit within a couple of kilometres of one another on the Milla de Oro. A decade ago none of this existed. Today the label on the building has become one of the defining features of the top of the Marbella market.

The wine on Marbella's better lists rarely comes from the coast. It comes down from 900 metres, an hour inland, off slopes that sit higher than any other vineyards in the province of Málaga. The Serranía de Ronda — the upland country wrapped around the cliff-top town of the same name — is the serious wine region of the Costa del Sol's hinterland, and for a buyer on the coast it is close enough to be a Sunday outing rather than a holiday.

Between the AP-7 motorway and the white village of Casares, the MA-8300 climbs through cork oak and olive country past a single estate containing seven restaurants, a Nicklaus-branded golf academy and a 6,000 m² beach club down on the Bahía de Casares. Finca Cortesin is, by some distance, the densest concentration of culinary investment on the far western Costa del Sol — and it sits in a municipality of barely a few thousand registered residents.