A well-known developer in Marbella has announced plans to build a luxury residential & hotel development on Marbella’s ‘Golden Mile’ called Marbella Design Hills in what looks like a major piece of good news for the local property market.

A recent article in the online paper El Confidencial revealed that up-market Costa del Sol developer Sierra Blanca Estates plans to build a luxury resort development called Marbella Design Hills of 70 homes and a 5-star hotel on 80,000m2 of land with a shopping centre, restaurants, and lots of landscaped areas. There will also be an associated beach club and restaurant of 2,000m2. The investment will be in the region of 250 million euros.

According to press reports the promotion will include luxury ‘branded residences’ in partnership with a well known luxury brand or person, rather like the nearby Karl Lagerfeld Villas Marbella, also built by Sierra Blanca Estates, which were announced back in November 2021.

“Marbella Design Hills represents the culmination of our transformative vision for the Golden Mile,” says Carlos Rodríguez, CEO of Sierra Blanca Estates. “A mixed project that will not only be a new focal point for private investment of future residents and international brands, but also a public space of enormous beauty and attraction for all the inhabitants and visitors to Marbella. We want our town to be the next international phenomenon along the lines of the Design District and Wynwood in Miami, that’s our dream.”

A prestigious development and investment of this size could be a major boost for the Costa del Sol property market when it gets off the ground. Marbella is not awash with new homes on the market – if anything, there is a shortage of new homes in the area (though not so much down the road in Estepona). The planning chaos of the Gil years, and subsequent legal mess, has paralysed new home building in Marbella for the best part of 20 years. And even if you widen the scope to look at the whole province of Malaga, home building in recent years has been cautious, certainly nothing like the boom years, as you can see from the chart below.

A new development like this can have a big positive impact on the local market as it adds value to the area, creates wealth, jobs, taxes, and makes the location even more desirable for upmarket buyers from Spain and abroad. Iconic developments can help locations develop in a favourable way that creates a positive feedback loop consolidating and reinforcing the positive development, attracting even more investment and demand. 

Judging by the amount of information available online about Marbella Design Hills the promotion still has a some way to go before it becomes a commercial reality. There is not even any mention of the project at the Sierra Blanca Estates website, though company sources assure me it will go ahead, and that the sales process will start next year.

So far the only news about Marbella Design Hills has come from the online news site El Confidencial, which is quite a low-key way to announce such a big project. It reminds me of how news got out last year about the ​​Christian A. Rockefeller Residences and Golf Club new development in Sotogrande.