Is Valencia too expensive now?

01The rise has mostly happened

In January 2021, the average asking price in Valencia city on Idealista, a Spanish property listing site, was €1,897 per square metre (m²)^2,3. By August 2026 it was €3,469, a rise of about 83% by our arithmetic on Idealista's own figures^2,3.

Fotocasa, another listing site that measures its own listings in its own way, shows almost the same rise. Its asking price for the city went from €1,836 to €3,358 per m² over the same months, also about 83%¹. When two publishers that measure differently agree, the size of the rise is hard to doubt.

These are asking prices: what sellers advertise, not what buyers finally pay. Spain rose too, but less. On Idealista, Spain's asking price went from about €1,800 per m² in January 2021 to €2,924 in August 2026, nearly two-thirds by our arithmetic^4,5. Valencia city outran the country.

So how expensive is Valencia now? In August 2026, the city's asking price of €3,469 per m² was above Spain's €2,924^2,3,4,5. It was far below Madrid city's €6,471¹⁰. That makes Valencia pricey by Spanish standards, but still far from the capital.

02And it has slowed sharply

For a buyer today, the recent rise matters more, and it is much smaller. In the year to August 2025, Idealista's asking price for Valencia city rose by about 20%². In the year to August 2026 it rose 6.1%^2,3.

Over that same year, Spain's asking price on the same site rose 12.5%^4,5. The city that raced ahead is now rising more slowly than the country^2,3,4,5.

Fotocasa tells the same story with its own figures. On its price-index pages, Valencia city's asking price rose about 20% in the year to August 2024¹. It rose about 18% in the year to August 2025, and about 7% in the year to August 2026¹.

“The city that raced ahead is now rising more slowly than the country.”

Asking prices are slowing, but the wider market has not stopped. Spain's statistics office (INE) tracks the prices of completed sales, but only for the whole Valencia region (the Comunitat Valenciana), not for the city. There, sale prices rose about 13% in the year to the second quarter of 2026^11,12.

That is a different measure for a wider area, but it shows that what buyers pay in the region was still rising.

Buyers from abroad are a large part of that regional market. Foreign buyers made about 31% of the home sales in the Valencia region in the second quarter of 2026, according to Spain's property registrars¹³. Across Spain, 57.4% of the homes foreigners bought that quarter went to buyers from the European Union^13,14.

03Russafa tells the city's story

The video opens in Russafa, a neighbourhood of Valencia city, and at first it looks like an exception. On Fotocasa's price-index pages, its asking price went from €2,614 per m² in January 2021 to €4,976 in August 2026¹⁵. That is a rise of about 90%¹⁵.

Over the same months and on the same pages, Valencia city rose about 83%¹. So Russafa is not the outlier. It rose almost in step with the city, and tells the whole city's story on one set of streets.

The start date matters. Count from January 2020 instead, and Russafa's rise is about 68%, because its asking price then was higher, at €2,963 per m²¹⁵. So any rise depends on the month you count from.

Russafa is also still climbing a little faster than the city. In August 2026 its asking price was 9.6% higher than a year before¹⁵. The whole city rose about 7% on the same pages¹.

All of these are asking prices from listings. No official body publishes a history of the prices buyers actually paid in Valencia city or in Russafa. So every city and neighbourhood series here is an asking price (see the figures we could not verify).

04Rents rose even faster

When prices climb this fast, you might expect rents to fall behind. They did not. On Fotocasa, Valencia city's asking rent went from €9.27 per m² a month in January 2021 to €18.50 in August 2026, about 100%¹. On Idealista it went from €8.80 to €16.30, about 85%⁶.

That is at least as fast as prices rose, which matters to anyone who would let the flat.

In Russafa, Fotocasa's asking rent roughly doubled, from €10.11 per m² a month to about €20.50¹⁵. Across Spain, rents rose far less: about 40% on Idealista over the same months, from €10.80 to €15.10 per m² a month¹⁶.

The two sites disagree about the last year. Idealista's asking rent for Valencia city was 3.5% higher in August 2026 than a year before⁶. Fotocasa's was about 15% higher, at €18.50 against €16.15¹. Both measure asking rents on their own listings, and neither is clearly the better guide, so we show both. Both agree that rents were still rising.

What a year's rent pays back

Because rents kept pace with prices, the gross rental yield held up. Gross yield is a year's rent divided by the price, before any costs or tax, so it is not profit.

Fotocasa's yield study puts Valencia city at 6.3% in the second quarter of 2026, up from 5.9% a year earlier⁷. The same study gives the Valencia region 6.6% and Spain 5.7%⁷. Idealista's own study puts Spain higher, at 6.5%, down from 7.2% a year earlier¹⁷. The two studies measure differently, so we compare places only within one study.

In Russafa, a rough sum of a year's asking rent divided by the asking price gives only about 5%¹⁵. The pricier neighbourhood pays back less of its price in rent. Torrent, a cheaper town just outside the city, comes out at 8.2% in Fotocasa's study⁷. But Torrent was one of the towns the 2024 flood hit^18,19.

Out of that rent come the tax on it, the property tax, building fees, insurance, repairs and any months without a tenant. An owner who lives in another EU country pays Spain 19% tax on rental income, after deducting the expenses of earning it²⁰.

05What it costs to buy and own

For a buyer who pays cash, the big cost on top of the price is one tax. To put numbers on it, we follow one example buyer. Our example buyer lives in another EU country and pays cash for a resale flat in Valencia city costing €300,000⁸.

That tax is the transfer tax, charged on the sale itself. Since 1 June 2026, the Valencia region charges 9% of the price on a resale home^8,9. Where the property's value is over €1 million, the rate is 11%^8,9. Before that, the general rate was 10%⁹.

For our example buyer, 9% comes to €27,000⁸. The flat would have to gain that much in value just to cover the tax.

Everything else is small by comparison. The notary and the land registry charge on official scales. On a €300,000 flat, their base fees come to about €388 and about €205, before 21% VAT and extra charges^21,22.

Real bills run above the base fee. The consumer group OCU gives its own example of a €150,000 resale home with a 14-page deed²³. Its bill comes to about €575 for the notary and €175 for the land registry²³.

By law, the seller pays for the original deed and the buyer for its copies, unless the contract says otherwise²⁴. A foreigner's tax identity number (NIE), which a buyer from abroad needs, costs €9.84 to issue²⁵.

An estate agent's fee is the open question. In Spain, a buyer owes an agency a fee only if they agreed to one²⁶. Across 60 agencies in five Spanish cities, Valencia among them, OCU found commissions of 2% to 6% of the sale price, averaging 5%²⁷.

A new-build home bought from a developer pays 10% VAT instead of the transfer tax²⁸. On top of that comes the region's stamp duty, 1.4% since 1 June 2026^8,9.

Owning it each year

Owning the flat costs far less, at least in tax. Spain's yearly property taxes are charged on a home's official tax value, called its cadastral value, not on the price you paid. In Valencia city those values were last revised in 1998, so they sit far below today's prices^29,30.

In 2026 the city's 421,680 residential properties have an average cadastral value of about €48,910²⁹. Valencia city's property tax (IBI), the council's yearly tax on property, is 0.5784% of the cadastral value in 2026³¹. On the city's average value, that comes to about €283 a year^29,31.

That rate is 20% lower than before 2024: the city cut it for 2024 and has kept the cut in 2025 and 2026³².

Spain also taxes a non-resident owner for any time the flat is not let, even while the owner stays in it. The tax falls on an imagined income of 2% of the cadastral value, because Valencia's values were last revised in 1998^29,33. The lower 1.1% rate applies only where values were revised within the last ten years^29,33.

For an owner living in another EU country, the tax rate on that imagined income is 19%³³. On a city-average home left empty all year, that comes to about €186^29,33.

These are averages. A real flat's cadastral value is printed on its property-tax bill, so its own taxes may be higher or lower.

06Tourist flats are mostly closed

For an ordinary flat upstairs in a block of flats, the city's 2026 rules do not allow a new tourist let. Valencia city's council gave final approval to new tourist-flat rules on 31 March 2026, and they were published on 4 May 2026^34,35. They replaced a moratorium on new tourist-flat licences with permanent saturation limits by neighbourhood and district^34,36.

Under those rules, tourist flats are capped at 2% of the homes in each neighbourhood and district³⁴. In residential buildings, they are allowed only on the ground or first floor of mixed-use buildings, with their own entrance from the street³⁴.

Even where the city allows one, a building's owners can ban tourist lets by a three-fifths vote. Spain's Supreme Court ruled so on 3 October 2024³⁷. A tourist-let registration in the Valencia region lasts five years and can be renewed³⁸.

So for an ordinary flat, the route the rules leave open is renting to people who live in the city. Spain's 2023 housing law caps rents only in "stressed residential market areas" that a regional government declares³⁹. The housing ministry's list of areas declared in the second quarter of 2026 has none in the Valencia region⁴⁰.

07The 2024 flood hit the towns south of the city

The October 2024 flood did its worst damage in the L'Horta Sud towns just south of Valencia city, among them Paiporta, Catarroja, Aldaia, Alfafar and Sedaví¹⁹. It also badly hit the outlying villages in the south of Valencia city's own municipality¹⁹. Torrent was among the towns it hit^18,19.

On 29 October 2024, the Poyo ravine, the Magro river and other channels overflowed in the province of Valencia¹⁹. The flood killed 229 people in the province¹⁸.

Russafa looks different on today's official flood maps. It lies outside every flood hazard and flood risk zone on the region's flood-risk plan, PATRICOVA^41,42. Spain's national flood-zone map (SNCZI) shows no river or sea flood area inside Russafa, even for a flood expected once in 500 years⁴³.

The nearest mapped zone is the old Turia riverbed, less than 150 metres from Russafa's north-east corner⁴¹. There, the regional plan expects a flood about once in 100 years, less than 0.8 metres deep⁴¹.

The plan is being revised in 2026, so this is today's picture, not a guarantee⁴². No source we found says whether the 2024 flood reached Russafa itself. The maps show mapped risk, not what happened that day.

In Spain, flood damage to insured homes is paid by a state-backed fund, the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, not by the private insurer⁴⁴. Every home policy carries a compulsory surcharge for the fund of 0.07 per thousand of the amount insured⁴⁴. That only helps a home that is insured.

By 14 September 2026, the fund had registered 251,803 claims from the October 2024 flood and handled 99.6% of them⁴⁵. We found no published figures on whether premiums rose, or cover got harder to find, in the flooded towns.

What did the flood do to prices in the towns it hit? The valuation firm Gloval published a study a year after the October 2024 flood¹⁸. It found average home prices in the flood-hit towns about 17% higher than a year earlier¹⁸.

The same study found home sales down more than 30% in Paiporta, Benaguasil and Picanya in the year after the flood¹⁸. That is 2025 data, so it is history now. Still, the flood did not make those towns cheap.

Spain's government plans a new channel from the Poyo ravine to the Turia diversion channel. It is meant to protect the towns downstream of Picanya against a flood expected once in 500 years⁴⁶. No date or budget has been given for it yet⁴⁶.

08So, is there still a deal?

It depends on what you need the flat to do. Here is how the figures answer that, as scenarios rather than advice.

• If you hoped to catch the big rise, most of it has already happened. On Idealista, the city's asking price now rises more slowly than Spain's: 6.1% against 12.5% in the year to August 2026^2,3,4,5.
• If you want to let a flat to tourists while you are away, the city's rules close that door for an ordinary flat upstairs³⁴.
• If you want a long-term tenant who lives in the city, the rent return has held up, because rents kept pace with prices. Fotocasa's study gives the city a gross yield of 6.3%, and our rough sum gives Russafa about 5%, both before costs^7,15.
• If you want a lower price and a higher gross yield, a cheaper town such as Torrent offers both on paper. Its asking price was about €1,970 per m² in September 2026, and its gross yield 8.2% in the second quarter^7,47. But Torrent was one of the towns the 2024 flood hit^18,19.
• If staying outside the mapped flood zones matters most, Russafa offers that, at a price: its asking price was €4,976 per m² in August 2026^15,41,42.

Back in Russafa, then, the bargain years are behind it. What is left is a pricey neighbourhood outside every mapped flood zone, where rents have kept pace with prices^15,41,42.

A real flat's own figures will differ from these averages. These are the things to check for one:

• its cadastral value, printed on its property-tax bill;
• the building's fees, and its rules on tourist lets;
• its exact address on the official flood maps;
• what its insurance covers;
• whether you have agreed to pay any agent's fee.