How much does a small house really cost in the Canary Islands

The maths: floor area times value per square metre

No public body publishes «how much a small property costs». What does get published, every quarter, is the average value per square metre of the properties assessed by valuation companies: in the first quarter of 2026 it was €2,233.7 per square metre for the Canaries, €2,203.4 in the province of Las Palmas and €2,264.7 in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The rest is a multiplication, and I do it myself: on one side the floor area, which I choose because it matches a real studio or one-bedroom property, on the other the official value.

• 40 m² at €2,233.7 per square metre comes to €89,348.
• 50 m² at €2,233.7 per square metre comes to €111,685.
• 60 m² at €2,233.7 per square metre comes to €134,022.
• Still at 50 m²: €110,170 using the province of Las Palmas value, €113,235 using the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife value.

The real gap isn't between the provinces, it's between the towns. Running the same sum on 50 m², Ingenio — the cheapest Canarian town in the Ministerio's table — comes to €71,590, and Adeje, the most expensive, comes to €186,395. It's the same imaginary property, and it's our own arithmetic: we choose the floor area, the value per square metre comes from the official table and it's an appraisal value, not a sale price.

The tax sits on top of the price

Buying a resale property means paying ITP (Impuesto sobre Transmisiones Patrimoniales), which in the Canaries has a general rate of 6.5% of the price. On my Canarian example of €111,685, that comes to €7,259.53 in tax; on the Ingenio example of €71,590 it comes to €4,653.35. These are my own sums on the same two figures as above, not an official tariff.

There's a case where you pay less, and it's the case of someone coming to live here: if the resale property becomes your habitual residence and you meet the requirements of the Canarian Texto Refundido, ITP drops to 5%. On a new property bought from the developer the mechanism is different — IGIC and AJD instead of ITP — and I explain that in the dedicated guide.

This is general guidance, not tax advice: the rates come with requirements, and your own situation needs looking at by a qualified professional before you sign anything.

What the sum doesn't include

On top of the price and the tax come the notary, registration at the Registro de la Propiedad, the gestoría if you use one and, if you buy with a mortgage, the bank's own costs. These depend on the value of the deed and the case, and I don't put a figure on them at random: when I draw up a quote, I ask for them with the price in front of me.

Then there's the part that comes back every year and that buyers almost always underestimate: IBI, the community fee, water, electricity and the rubbish tax. On a small apartment in a complex with a pool, the community fee weighs more than you'd expect. How these are worked out is in the guide to running costs.

What about properties for a few tens of thousands of euros?

People ask me this often, after seeing a listing well under these figures. The data say something simple: even taking the cheapest town in the official table and a studio-sized floor area, the sum doesn't drop below roughly seventy thousand euros. Below that threshold there isn't a statistic, there's a story: serious work still to do, a registry situation to sort out, a share of ownership instead of the whole property. That's not necessarily a problem, but it needs understanding before the deposit.