
Roquetas de Mar
Roquetas de Mar is the second most populated municipality in Almería province: a hundred and eleven thousand people, twenty-one kilometres from the capital. It grew out of a fishing village and a seventeenth-century fort, and reached its present size over the last fifty years — on greenhouses and tourism at once.
For anyone moving that is a rare combination: a town large enough to live in all year, with a resort seafront and cheap housing. There are many foreign residents, and not only from northern Europe — people from all over the world work in the greenhouses. Almería is half an hour away and its airport with it. The drawback is the landscape: all around is that sea of plastic, visible even from space.
- Almería · 21 km — the provincial capital, hospitals and the airport
- Cabo de Gata · 50 km — the nature park and undeveloped shore
- Adra · 35 km — the province's oldest town, to the west
Roquetas de Mar sits in Almería, right on the water. 30.6% of residents are foreign nationals per the census: Spanish is not the only language you will hear on the street. The airport is 20 minutes away, closer than for most places in the database. Fast internet at a median of 400 Mbps: remote work is not a problem here.
Hospital, terrain, getting around
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 °CTourist load
On the map
What tenants actually pay
sourcedThis is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 5 062 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 650 € 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: Roquetas de Mar
Rent by number of bedrooms
asking price, estimate| 1 bedroom | 500 €/mo | |
| 2 bedrooms | 650 €/mo | |
| 3 bedrooms | ≈ 850 €/mo | model: two-bed × 1.3, no measurement yet |
| Median of active leases, 2024 | 450 €/mo | SERPAVI · 77 m² |
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- The British School of AlmeríaRoquetas de MarBritishEnglish, Spanish · 3–18 · privateDespite the "Almería" name, the school is physically in Roquetas de Mar — confirmed by the official BOJA gazette
Checked against registries and school sites: 2026-09-17. Fees are on each school's site: nobody publishes them centrally.
Renting without a Spanish contract
How realistic a long lease is without a nómina — on foreign income, savings or prepayment.
- —30.6% foreign residents — income from abroad is routine for landlords here
- —A community with its own services: agencies have dealt with foreigners before
- —Prices rising 17.4% 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- Romania8 129
- Morocco7 414
- Senegal3 397
- ML1 368
- Colombia1 223
- Russia1 035
- MR887
- GH760
- roRomanian~7 981school, doctors or lawyers in the language
- arArabic~5 631school, doctors or lawyers in the languageMostly Moroccan agricultural labour migrants rather than lifestyle relocators
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 2026/2720 min to the airport- United Kingdom2
- other countries1
Destinations served at least weekly in January; checked 2026-09-17.
Paperwork and practicalities
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».
Where to look next
- Santa Cruz de La Palma1 400 €/m²
- Adra1 150 €/m²
- Jerez de la Frontera1 734 €/m²
- Gandía1 644 €/m²
- Los Alcázares1 750 €/m²