Sooner or later, most repeat guests catch themselves browsing apartment listings between swims. Fair enough: Los Gigantes is small, supply is finite, and waking up under the cliffs does strange things to financial prudence. Here is the sober version — figures current as of July 2026 and worth re-verifying with professionals before you sign anything.
The local expert
This post features Verde’s Tenerife (verdestenerife.com), the resort’s long-established family agency. By the firm’s own account its roots reach back to 1971, when founder Juan Verde de León became one of the pioneers of selling homes in the young Acantilados de Los Gigantes; the agency he created in 1976 is run today by his son, José Juan Verde Villar, from the office at Calle Flor de Pascua 2. Services cover sales, valuations and the full paperwork trail, across Los Gigantes, Puerto de Santiago, Playa de la Arena, Playa San Juan and Abama. Half a century watching one small market is the kind of context no portal gives you.
What buying actually involves
- Paperwork first: every foreign buyer needs an NIE (the foreigner’s tax number) and, in practice, a Spanish bank account.
- The dance — reservation deposit, then the contrato de arras (customarily 10%: walk away and lose it; if the seller walks, they repay double), then completion before a notary typically 30–90 days later. Six to twelve weeks end to end is normal.
- On a resale, add Canary transfer tax (ITP) at 6.5%, plus notary, registry and gestoría (roughly 1–1.5% combined) and legal fees (typically around 1%). New builds pay 7% IGIC plus stamp duty instead. Budget all-in transaction costs of roughly 8–12% over the sticker.
- Owning means IBI municipal tax, refuse charges, community fees that vary widely by complex (ask for the real figures per listing), and the non-resident imputed income tax each year (19% for EU residents, 24% for others including the UK, on a small percentage of cadastral value).
- Financing — non-resident mortgages commonly run at 60–70% loan-to-value. And note: Spain abolished its golden-visa scheme in April 2025, so property no longer buys residency; the Schengen 90/180-day rule applies to non-EU owners.
The 2025 law every investor must understand
If your plan is “buy it and rent it to holidaymakers”, read this twice. The Canary Islands’ holiday-rental law in force since 13 December 2025 froze new vivienda vacacional licences for roughly five years while municipalities re-zone — and, per the legal analyses published since, existing licences are personal and extinguish automatically when the property is sold. In plain terms: an apartment advertised “with rental licence” generally cannot pass that licence to you at completion, and a fresh application is, for now, largely impossible. Long-term letting and personal use are unaffected. This single point reshapes the investment maths. Take specialist advice (an agency that knows each complex’s status, plus an independent lawyer) before you offer.
What things cost
Portal indices put Los Gigantes at roughly €4,200 per square metre in mid-2026 (a thin market; treat as indicative), with entry-level listings from around €120,000 and realistic sea-view one-bedroom apartments in the €180,000–280,000 band. The stock is finite, the cliffs are not making any more coastline, and the best apartments rarely reach the portals at all — which is where fifty years of local files come in.