Zone guide · Jávea (Xàbia)
Buying Property in El Arenal
The sandy beach, the promenade and the apartment blocks behind them. Legally the Arenal is two things at once: a Ley de Costas frontline, and the part of Javea where the new holiday-rental rules bite hardest. Both are checkable before you sign anything.
4.9 from 104 Google reviews · Juan Bertomeu, abogado ICALI 4643 · Daniel Bertomeu, tax adviser (AEDAF 06838) · Legal position last reviewed July 2026
So, the Arenal. If you have ever holidayed in Javea, this is the part you remember: the sandy beach, the curve of restaurants along the promenade, apartments behind, and everything on foot. Families come back year after year, and sooner or later some of them stop renting and start viewing.
Legally, it is two zones stacked on top of each other. Along the front runs the Ley de Costas, the coastal law that decides what a frontline building may ever become. Behind it sit the apartment blocks, at exactly the moment the town has turned strictest on holiday rentals. Neither is a reason not to buy here. Both are reasons to check first.
Javea sits right between our two offices, Moraira on one side and Denia on the other, and we are in town every week, at the notary, the town hall and the property, with well over 100 completed purchases in Javea over the years. The legal side of every file runs under Juan Bertomeu, abogado, ICALI 4643, in practice since 1991.
Who buys in El Arenal
British and Dutch buyers dominate the Arenal. Town-wide, the British community, at around 6,000 people, is the largest British colony in the whole Comunitat Valenciana, and the German, Belgian and Nordic groups are strong on top of that. The buyers here split in two. Families and retirees want the walk-to-beach life, an apartment where the car stays parked all week. Investors want the strongest holiday-let demand in town, and they are precisely the people the new rental rules affect most. Which of the two you are changes the legal homework completely.
What we actually check in El Arenal
The deslinde decides what frontline means
Under the Ley de Costas the coastal protection strip runs 100 metres inland as a general rule, and 20 metres where the land was already urban in 1988. The Arenal is one of the frontline stretches of Javea where that line does real work, and two near-identical buildings a street apart can sit on opposite sides of it. Where the deslinde, the official line, falls decides what can ever be done with a frontline property. We establish where a building stands before you pay a deposit, not after.
The community votes before the town hall does
Most of the Arenal is apartments, and an apartment brings the neighbours into the deal. Since 3 April 2025 a new tourist let in an apartment building needs the community's approval by a three-fifths majority, and the regional rules under Decreto-ley 9/2024 define a tourist let as the whole dwelling, for ten days or fewer to the same guest; letting by the room is prohibited. The building's own minutes can close the door before any licence question starts, so we read them as part of the purchase check.
Older stock and the habitability paper
Plenty of the apartments behind the beach date from earlier decades, and every resale needs its habitability position confirmed. The second-occupation licence works as a declaracion responsable under Decreto 12/2021, valid ten years and renewed when the property changes hands or a new utility contract is signed. It is not a formality; without it you cannot connect or transfer water and electricity. We confirm it exists and still holds before completion.
Holiday lets after 28 May 2026
The Arenal under the 28 May 2026 rental caps
On 28 May 2026 the council gave initial approval to per-zone caps on tourist licences across Javea, and none of it is final yet: the plan still needs definitive approval and publication in the province's official bulletin, so every figure is provisional. No percentage has been published for the Arenal by that name. The caps follow the planning map rather than the names on the agents' boards; the neighbouring Montanar stretch carries 20 per cent under the initial approval, and only the exact address settles which rule applies to a given building. The part that bites here is different anyway: new licences for apartments are suspended for one year while the plan settles, and the Arenal is Javea's apartment heartland. Single-family homes keep the clearer route, subject to the caps. Honestly, nobody can promise you a licence at the Arenal right now, and you should be wary of anyone who does. What we do instead is check the live position for the specific property before you commit to it.
Tourist rental licences in Jávea: the current rules and our fixed feeOwning in El Arenal, the tax side
Javea collects its own local taxes through Xabia Tributa, the town's own office, one of the very few municipalities in Alicante province to do so, while Denia, Teulada and Calp all use SUMA. Your IBI arrives from Xabia Tributa at 0.85 per cent of the valor catastral under the 2023 ordinance, with a small cut approved for 2025 and a separate waste charge billed from the same office since August 2025. None of that touches the national side: as a non-resident you still file a Modelo 210 every year, even when the apartment sits empty, and because Javea's catastral revision is an old one the imputed base is usually 2 per cent, taxed at 19 per cent for EU and EEA residents and 24 per cent for everyone else, UK included.
Modelo 210 in Jávea: what non-resident owners file, and our feeEl Arenal: questions buyers actually ask
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