relocoast
View of Alcazaba fortress on a cliff during sunset in Almería, Spain.
Costa de Almería · Almería

Almería

5Winter liveability / 5To the sea 500 mTo the airport 15 min · LEIPer m² 1 657

Almería is the capital of the province of the same name in south-east Spain. The city lies in a wide bay ringed by mountains on three sides: the Sierra de Gádor to the west, the Sierra Alhamilla to the north, and the valley of the Andarax to the east. Above it stands the Alcazaba, a tenth-century Moorish fortress and one of the largest in Spain.

This is one of the driest corners of the country. There are fewer than thirty rainy days a year, and by hours of sunshine Almería ranks first in our base. The local economy is built on that dryness: west of the city stretch kilometres of greenhouses growing vegetables for export all year round. Housing here is among the cheapest on the Mediterranean, and that is no accident — the city lives on farming and the port rather than on tourism. Next door is the Cabo de Gata nature park, a shore with almost nothing built on it.

Worth a trip nearby
  • Cabo de Gata · 30 kmthe nature park and an undeveloped shore
  • Mojácar · 90 kmthe white town on the hillside and the beaches
  • Roquetas de Mar · 20 kmthe cheaper resort town next door
Resalesource
1 657€/m²
+8% price growth yoy
appraised value, Ministerio de Vivienda
New build
2 100€/m²
Rent, 2 bed
680€/mo
Populationsource
204 772
Foreign residents 12.2%
Winter humidity
63%
Sunshine hours per year
3 150h
Rent, 1 bed
500€/mo
International schools
2
Internet
600Mbps

Almería sits in Almería, right on the water. Winter here is livelier than in most towns on the Costa de Almería: our rating is 5 out of 5, one of the few on this coast that does not empty out. You can live here without a car: our rating is 4 out of 5, rare on the Spanish coast, and the town has its own train station. The airport is 15 minutes away, closer than for most places in the database.

Hospital, terrain, getting around

Nearest hospitalsource
15min by car
Hospital Universitario Torrecardenas
Almería · 4.1 km · public
Terrainsource
rolling
Centre at 14 m, 29 m of elevation change
25–80 m of change — the climb from the sea to the centre is noticeable on foot
Car-freeour rating
4/5
comfortable without a car
No rail station within 3 km · bus stops within 1.5 km: 3

Where from: the Ministry of Health hospital catalogue, road time · elevations from the Copernicus terrain model · OpenStreetMap · ratings for car-free and hospital minutes are ours.

Sea temperature

5 months above 20 °C
16
J
15
F
15
M
16
A
18
M
21
J
24
J
25
A
24
S
21
O
18
N
17
D

Tourist load

2
J
2
F
3
M
3
A
3
M
4
J
4
J
4
A
4
S
3
O
3
N
3
D

On the map

What tenants actually pay

sourced
Median
549€/mo
75th percentile
660€/mo
Flat size
83

This is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 8 031 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 680 € for a two-bedroom.

The point of the 75th percentile: it is closer to what is being signed now than the median. The gap between them shows how much a new tenant overpays relative to long-standing ones.

Where from: SERPAVI, Ministerio de Vivienda · municipality: Almería

Rent by number of bedrooms

asking price, estimate
1 bedroom500/mo
2 bedrooms680/mo
3 bedrooms880/mo
Median of active leases, 2024549/mo

Asking prices are what long lets are advertised at today; the registry is what tenants pay on signed leases, including old ones. The gap between them is your negotiating argument.

Schools nearby

from registries
  • Montessori School AlmeríaAlmeríaBritishEnglish, Spanish · 2–12 · privateOnly preschool and primary (up to age 12), no secondary stage; recognised by the Junta de Andalucía as a "British School in Spain"

Checked against registries and school sites: 2026-09-17. Fees are on each school's site: nobody publishes them centrally.

2

Renting without a Spanish contract

How realistic a long lease is without a nómina — on foreign income, savings or prepayment.

  • Prices rising 8% a year — the landlord picks, and the first filter is a nómina

This is our model, not a measurement: demanding a nómina is an individual landlord's practice and nobody publishes it. The rating is derived from the share of foreign residents, the presence of a community with services, price growth, seasonality of the stock and the size of the town.

Who lives here

INE 2025
Foreign residents on the padrón
12.2%
24,985 of 204,772
  • Morocco11 081
  • Colombia2 633
  • Romania1 845
  • Venezuela891
  • Argentina722
  • Peru674
  • Italy604
  • Senegal503
Communities and services in their language
  • No notable foreign-language community with services recorded.

Where from: INE, Censo Anual de Población · the register-based census counts padrón registrations by citizenship on 1 January, not everyone living here: seasonal owners and the unregistered are outside it, and naturalised residents count as Spanish.

Winter direct flights from LEI

January 2026/2715 min to the airport
  • United Kingdom2
  • other countries1

Destinations served at least weekly in January; checked 2026-09-17.

Paperwork and practicalities

Appointment for the TIE· Almeríafrom reports
3
Two places: the station in Almería itself and the one in El Ejido. Both watching services agree on two to four weeks. Nobody reports a shortage of fingerprint appointments; the queues are only for regularisation paperwork. There is little evidence, so treat this as a rough estimate.
1 — no slots for weeks, 5 — freely available. Checked 2026-09-17
Coworking within 3 km
not on the map
Dog beaches within 8 km
not on the map
Vets within 5 km
1

From OpenStreetMap — an open map filled in by volunteers. Something missing there may still exist: read this as «we found this many», not «there are no more».

Seascape with dramatic rocky formations near Almería, Spain at sunset.
Paco Valentin · Pexels
Panoramic view on city skyline and walls of Alcazaba fortress in Almeria, Andalusia, Spain
Sergey Dzyuba · Depositphotos

Month by month

Air, sea, how busy it gets and what stays open — for each month on its own.

Where to look next

Nearby on the same coast
Compare with Roquetas de Mar
Cheaper with the same sea
Similar price, other coasts
Compare with Gandía
Verified: 2026-09-14 · where the data comes from