Lanzarote: where to buy a house, area by area

The three residential areas on the coast

• Puerto del Carmen, in the municipality of Tías: the longest and most lived-in, with the old harbour and services open all year round. It's the area where you can live best without a car, and the one with the most evening life: if you want quiet, look at the upper part.
• Playa Blanca, in the municipality of Yaiza: newer and tidier, with the Papagayo beaches nearby and the ferries to Fuerteventura. It suits anyone who wants a well-kept property in a quiet spot.
• Costa Teguise: born as a planned tourist area, with developments, gardens and sheltered beaches. It's breezy, convenient for the airport and the capital, and more uniform than the other two.

I won't tell you which one is best: that would be an opinion sold as a fact. What I do suggest is sleeping in all three, because three nights in each almost always changes the ranking.

Arrecife and the north

Arrecife is the only place on the island that feels like a town: hospital, offices, schools, a port, shops that don't depend on the season. Anyone relocating for work, or looking for a property to live in year-round, finds the most sensible options here.

The north is another island altogether: Haría and its palm valley, old Teguise with its market, Famara with its cliffs. There are few properties, often village houses, and anyone buying here already knows what they want. I take people here who are after character rather than convenience, warning them that they'll need to drive.

Manrique's mark on the building rules

Lanzarote has the most recognisable look in the archipelago: low, white houses, green or blue window frames, no tower blocks on the coast. It's not an accident. The island has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1993, and the programme's entry notes that tourism development has been guided by the island's 2001 land-use plan and by César Manrique's criteria, with buildings designed to blend with the environment.

For a buyer this means one thing: here, aesthetics aren't a matter of taste, they're a matter of planning permission. I won't give you a maximum height or a list of approved colours, because I haven't read any rule that sets them and I don't invent numbers. What I can tell you is that, by tradition and local regulations, façades, colours and window frames follow a set pattern, and that before any renovation, veranda or pool, you should ask the council's technical office first.

Who chooses what

• Puerto del Carmen: for anyone who wants life, services within walking distance and the sea on their doorstep.
• Playa Blanca: for anyone after a well-kept property in a quiet setting.
• Costa Teguise: for anyone who wants convenience and a tidy development.
• Arrecife: for anyone genuinely relocating who wants a town.
• Haría, Teguise, Famara: for anyone after character and quiet who isn't put off by driving.

Listings for the island, ours and our partner agencies' on the ground, are on the Lanzarote page: tell me which of these lines sounds like you, and I'll tell you where I'd start.

The biosphere reserve and the land-use plan come from UNESCO's entry; the rest is my own opinion, with no price estimates. Building restrictions are for the council to decide.