Sea view or pool? What really affects the price of a property in the Canary Islands

View, orientation and terrace: the block that matters most

The three things go together, and I look at them together. An open, front-on sea view isn't the same as a narrow gap between two buildings: the first stays, the second disappears the day someone builds. When I take a client to a viewing, the first question I ask the owner is who owns the land right in front.

Orientation matters as much as the view, and here in a way that surprises people arriving from abroad: what people look for is shelter from the wind, and nobody uses a terrace that's badly exposed. A genuinely liveable terrace changes a property more than an extra room does.

Communal pool or private pool

A communal pool is almost standard in coastal developments: it's there, it looks good in photos, but precisely because everyone has one, it doesn't move the price as much as people expect. What matters is how well it's kept, whether there's an area sheltered from the wind, and how much it adds to the community fees.

A private pool does move the price, but it narrows the pool of buyers: it comes with maintenance that a careful buyer factors in. To anyone selling, I say declare the real costs upfront, rather than letting the buyer discover them at the second viewing.

Lift and garage: the two quiet ones

• A lift doesn't excite anyone, but its absence rules out a slice of buyers: anyone buying with retirement in mind won't take a third-floor property without one.
• A garage is worth as much as parking on that street is hard: in the busiest tourist areas it's the first thing I hear buyers ask about, elsewhere it barely comes up.
• A storage room, a trastero, looks like a detail until you're buying a house to actually live in: it weighs little on the price and a lot on the decision.

What matters less than people think

• A newly fitted kitchen: it's a nice touch, but almost nobody pays the full cost of someone else's taste.
• Furniture left behind: it helps a property sell faster, not for more.
• Square metres you can't see: a long corridor isn't worth as much as a short terrace.
• Distance to the sea as the crow flies: what matters is whether you can walk there, not what the map says.

How we say it in a listing

I write up features in order of their real weight, and in a way that can be checked: a front-on sea view from the living room, orientation, a usable terrace, the community pool and its costs, lift or no lift, garage and storage room. No superlatives: people looking for a property here read dozens of listings a day and can tell when it's just noise.

One thing in a listing isn't optional: the energy rating. The Real Decreto 390/2021 states that the energy efficiency label must be included in every offer, promotion and advertisement aimed at a sale or a letting, and that anyone publishing a listing, whether through an agency, on a portal, on a billboard or on a website, is required to include the calificación de eficiencia energética, the energy performance rating. It's the first thing missing from listings put together in a hurry, and it's why the certificate needs to be requested before publishing.