In November 2026 you can buy a habitable country house with 3,000 to 8,000 m² of land in the Vall d’Albaida for 150,000 to 300,000 euros, and a working finca with ten hectares of olives for the price of a two-bedroom flat in Amsterdam. I’m Salva Palau, estate agent and court-appointed property appraiser at Kapitalia, with offices in Ontinyent, Xàtiva, Alcoi and Cocentaina, and fincas for sale in inland Valencia are the properties I get asked about most by buyers from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and the UK: a stone masía at the foot of the Serra de Mariola, a small house among almond trees, a plot with a well and a view. They are also, by a wide margin, the purchases where I see the most expensive mistakes.
This guide is what I would tell any European buyer before they drive up to see one: what the words finca, masía and casa de campo actually mean here, what things cost in 2026 with real listings, the long checklist I go through as an appraiser before anyone pays a deposit (land classification, old buildings without a licence, water rights, electricity, access, fire risk), the taxes, and what you can and cannot do with the house afterwards. Figures are orientative and dated, and the law is summarised, not reproduced.
Finca, masía, casa de campo: what you are actually buying, and where
Three words cover most of the rural market here. A finca is simply a rural property: land, with or without a building. A masía (mas, maset) is the traditional farmhouse of the Valencian and Catalan interior, usually stone, usually two or three floors with corrals and stores, often eighteenth or nineteenth century. A casa de campo or caseta is the more modest weekend house on a plot of olives or almonds that almost every family in Ontinyent (Onteniente) or Alcoi (Alcoy) has owned at some point. The legal status of the three can be identical or completely different, which is the first lesson of this guide.
The territory is the mountainous interior where the provinces of Valencia and Alicante meet. On the Valencian side, the Vall d’Albaida: Ontinyent, its capital, at 382 m, and the villages of Bocairent, Agullent, Albaida, Alfafara and Fontanars dels Alforins, with vineyards, olive groves and dry-stone terraces. On the Alicante side, L’Alcoià and El Comtat: Alcoy, Cocentaina, Muro, Agres, Banyeres de Mariola (the highest town in the province of Alicante) and the small villages towards Penàguila and Beniarrés. Between them rises the Serra de Mariola, a natural park of 17,257 hectares declared in 2002 across seven municipalities, with the Montcabrer at 1,389 m; a few kilometres south, the Carrascar de la Font Roja above Alcoy. This is not the Costa Blanca: winters are real at 600 to 800 metres, with frost and the occasional snowfall, and summers are noticeably cooler than Alicante’s.
Connections are better than the landscape suggests. By the A-7 motorway, Ontinyent and Alcoy are 75 to 90 minutes from both Valencia (VLC) and Alicante (ALC) airports; the beaches of Gandia, Dénia and Altea are about an hour. A finca here is a home in the country ten minutes from a real town with a hospital and schools, not an isolated retreat. I described each town in my guides to buying a house in Ontinyent, Xàtiva and Alcoy.
What fincas for sale in inland Valencia cost in 2026
There is no price index for country property the way there is for flats, so the honest way to show the market is with real listings. These are properties on sale at Kapitalia in November 2026 (asking prices, not closing prices; links lead to the full listing):
| Property | Built | Land | Asking price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plot with small house, Ontinyent | 64 m² | 7,900 m² | 56,000 € |
| Country house, Albaida (one bedroom, upper floor as store) | 100 m² | 21,882 m² | 85,000 € |
| Country house built in 2006, Ontinyent | 71 m² | 4,053 m² | 95,000 € |
| Country house, La Solana, Ontinyent (three bedrooms, fenced) | 150 m² | 3,324 m² | 159,000 € |
| Country house with its own water, La Umbria, Ontinyent | 132 m² | 5,479 m² | 168,000 € |
| Country house of 1940, Camí Bonavista, Ontinyent | 195 m² | 8,374 m² | 250,000 € |
| Former livestock farm by the Beniarrés reservoir, Planes | 713 m² | 56,628 m² | 620,000 € |
| Finca Dubots, Penàguila: masía with 11,000 olive and 1,800 almond trees in production | 2,444 m² | 288,798 m² | 1,400,000 € |
| Historic masía with 10 hectares, Gormaig, Cocentaina | 700 m² | 100,000 m² | 3,500,000 € |
Read it as four markets. Under 100,000 €: casetas and small houses on 4,000 to 20,000 m² of olives or almonds, often built as agricultural stores decades ago, frequently without a licence as a dwelling, sometimes without mains electricity; fine for weekends, risky as a permanent home. From 130,000 to 300,000 €: habitable country houses of 120 to 250 m² on 2,000 to 8,000 m² plots within a few kilometres of Ontinyent, Albaida or Cocentaina, with water and electricity, which is where most of our European buyers end up. From 600,000 € to 1.5 million: working fincas with hectares, outbuildings and their own water, where you are buying an agricultural business as much as a house. And the singular estates: the historic masías with ten or more hectares, few buyers and long negotiations. I analysed one of those, the 895,000 € Mas de la Penya Nova in Bocairent, in detail: 1,888 m² built on six hectares at the foot of the Mariola, and why the asking price is only the entry ticket.
Two warnings I repeat in every valuation: in rural property the price per square metre means little, because the same 150 m² house is worth double with a legal well and mains electricity than without; and singular fincas routinely close well below their asking price, because there are very few buyers for each one. The full portfolio is in Kapitalia’s country houses and estates for sale in Ontinyent page.
The checklist: what I verify before anyone pays a deposit
This is the core of the guide. Buying a flat in Ontinyent takes a nota simple and a look at the community’s accounts; buying a finca takes all of this. Most of it can be checked in two to three weeks, before the arras contract, and most of it is what the advert does not mention.
1. Land classification: almost all fincas are on non-developable land
Practically every finca here sits on suelo no urbanizable (rural land), either común or protegido (natural park, forest, flood zones, landscape protection). The Valencian planning law, the TRLOTUP (Decreto Legislativo 1/2021), treats a new isolated family home on rural land as exceptional: a plot of uninterrupted perimeter that in no case is smaller than one hectare per dwelling, a building that covers no more than 2 % of the plot, water supply, waste-water treatment, no formation of a settlement, and a note in the Land Registry binding the plot to the house and making it indivisible (articles 211 and 214). Municipal plans often demand more than the hectare. In practice: on a 4,000 m² plot you will not get a licence for a new house, and on protected land never. What you can do with an existing house depends on its paperwork (next point). Ask the town hall for the planning report (cédula urbanística) before you negotiate; it answers all of this.
2. The house itself: licensed, legalisable, or neither
Three situations, with very different values. A house built with a licence, or declared in the Land Registry with its surfaces, is the easy case. A house built without a licence but fully finished before 20 August 2014 can be brought into the system through the minimización de impacto territorial procedure (TRLOTUP, articles 228 to 231): the town hall identifies the area, the owner proves the age with dated aerial photographs, and in exchange for the works strictly needed (access, water, waste water, electricity, fire prevention) the house obtains the conditions to be registered and connected. Separately, a building older than the period in which the administration can still order its demolition can be registered by age (declaración de obra nueva por antigüedad, article 28.4 of the national land law), which allows it to be sold, mortgaged and inherited as a house; registering by age is not legalising, and the Registry notes it. A house finished after August 2014 without a licence is the third case: it can still be the subject of a restoration order, cannot be legalised through that procedure and, for my purposes, is worth the land. Ask for the nota simple, the cadastral certificate with the building’s year and the town hall’s file. If the surfaces in the deed, the cadastre and reality disagree, which in masías is the rule rather than the exception, budget for a surveyor and a georeferenced plan (the coordination procedure of article 199 of the Mortgage Law) before completion.
The 2022 reform of the TRLOTUP (Decreto Ley 4/2022) opened a specific door for traditional rural buildings built before 1975: rehabilitation and new uses (residential, rural tourism, cultural, agricultural) with a municipal licence, relaxing the usual rural-land limits on plot size, height and occupation, provided the original elements are preserved and the building is identified in a planning instrument. For a buyer looking at an old masía that is the single most useful rule in the book, and also the one to confirm with the specific town hall, because its application depends on each municipality’s plan.
3. Natural parks and forest land
Seven municipalities share the Serra de Mariola park (Alcoy, Cocentaina, Muro, Agres, Alfafara, Bocairent and Banyeres de Mariola), and much of the land around Ontinyent and Alcoy is classified as forest even outside the parks. Inside a park, the management plans (PORN and PRUG) restrict building, felling, fencing and some activities, and a licence takes longer; on forest land, felling and clearing need authorisation, and the owner of a house is obliged to maintain a perimeter strip clear of brush and to keep access for fire vehicles, with the width set by the regional fire-prevention rules and the municipal plan. Check the park boundary and the forest classification on the Generalitat’s map viewer before you fall in love with the view: the pine wood behind the house is a joy in May and a liability in August.
4. Water: the asset that decides the value
Most fincas have no mains water. The options are a well, a spring, a cistern filled by lorry, or a connection to an irrigation community (comunidad de regantes) with its own turns and fees. «Own well» in an advert means nothing until you see the paper: in the Júcar basin, private groundwater use of up to 7,000 m³ a year under article 54.2 of the Water Act must be registered in Section B of the Registro de Aguas of the Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar, with a meter at the pump; larger volumes need a full concession. Two details matter enormously to a buyer. The right is tied to the plot where the water is used, and it does not pass automatically with the sale: the new owner must apply for a new inscription with the updated registry note. And an unregistered well whose application is refused is, in the CHJ’s own words, an illegal well to be sealed. A spring that rises on the finca may be public water. A legal well is what turns a 100,000 € plot into a 160,000 € home; for many casetas, a cistern and lorry deliveries are the realistic alternative.
5. Electricity, drainage, access
Ask three questions. Is there a mains electricity contract in the current owner’s name, or does the house run on a generator or solar panels? A new medium-voltage line to an isolated finca can cost as much as a flat in Ontinyent; off-grid solar with batteries costs far less and is now the normal solution far from the grid. Where does the waste water go? Most fincas have a septic tank; make sure it exists and is not simply a pipe into the ravine, because registering an old house will require a proper system. And who owns the track? Access can be a public path, a private track across a neighbour’s land with a registered right of way, or a right of way that everyone assumes and nobody wrote down. The nota simple shows registered easements; for the rest, walk the track with the seller and ask the neighbours. Add hunting rights, irrigation turns and any public livestock path (vía pecuaria) crossing the land.
6. The paper you need to live there
To contract water and electricity in the Valencian Community you need a second-occupation licence, today a responsible declaration filed at the town hall, which requires the house to be registered and habitable; the energy certificate is compulsory for the sale. Finally, check the IBI receipts (rural IBI is low, often tens or a few hundred euros a year, but arrears follow the property) and whether the finca is one registry unit or several, because sellers of masías routinely add up neighbouring plots in the advert that are not all theirs.
If you want this list applied to a specific property, with a written value and the risks ranked, that is what I do as a court-appointed property appraiser: an appraisal report plus a preliminary planning and cadastral study of the plot, signed, before you negotiate. It costs a fraction of the mistakes it prevents.
The purchase process, in brief
The legal steps are the same as for any home in Spain, and I explain them step by step in the Ontinyent guide: get your NIE (the foreigner’s tax number, without which you cannot sign), open a Spanish bank account and prepare proof of funds, make an offer, sign a reservation and then an arras contract with a deposit of around 10 %, complete before a notary and register the deed at the Land Registry. The Spanish summary of the requirements for foreign buyers is in requisitos para comprar vivienda en España siendo extranjero.
What changes with a finca is the arras. Never sign one for a rural property until the checks above are done, and write into it what you were promised: that the well is registered, that the house is registered with so many square metres, that the access is a registered right of way, that the seller will deliver the second-occupation declaration. In the most common form, arras penitenciales, the buyer who walks away loses the deposit and the seller who walks away returns it doubled. I listed the five mistakes I see in arras contracts; for fincas, add a sixth: not describing the land by registry and cadastral references, plot by plot.
Taxes, costs and financing a finca in 2026
| Cost | Buying from a private owner | Buying from a company or a farmer who sells as a business |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer tax (ITP) | 9 % of the price in the Valencian Community from 1 June 2026 (Ley 5/2025; 10 % before; 11 % on the whole value above 1,000,000 €), on the price or the Catastro reference value if higher | Rural land is in principle VAT-exempt, so ITP applies unless the seller waives the exemption for a buyer who is a VAT business; then 21 % VAT plus 1.4 % stamp duty (AJD) |
| Notary and Land Registry | Roughly 1,000 to 2,000 € for a typical finca deed; more when several registry plots are grouped or a surveyor’s plan is incorporated | |
| Surveyor and georeferenced plan | From a few hundred euros to a few thousand, depending on the number of plots and discrepancies | |
| Registration of the well | Technical report and CHJ filing; count on a few hundred euros plus the meter | |
| Yearly: IBI | Rural IBI is low; the house, if registered, pays a small urban-type quota | |
| Yearly: non-resident income tax | Notional income on the registered building (1.1 % or 2 % of its cadastral value, taxed at 19 % for EU/EEA residents and 24 % for others, form 210), as for any home | |
Worked example: a 168,000 € country house bought from a private owner pays 15,120 € in transfer tax plus, say, 1,500 € in notary, registry and gestoría: around 10 % on top of the price. Mortgages are the sore point. Spanish banks finance rural property reluctantly: the valuation company will value the registered house and little else, the land counts for less than you paid, and the result is typically 50 to 60 % of the valuation, with shorter terms, if the house is legally registered at all. In practice most European buyers of fincas here pay cash, often from the sale of a property at home. Agency fees are agreed in writing before any offer; ask for them including VAT.
Living in it, renting it out, or farming it
As a home, a finca in the Vall d’Albaida or El Comtat is a good life: cool nights, your own olives and almonds, a town with a hospital ten minutes away. As an investment, the rules of 2026 matter. Long-term and seasonal lets are governed by the two royal decrees of 2026 that cap annual rent updates at 2 % until the end of 2027 and tighten seasonal and room-by-room lets, with the second still awaiting parliamentary ratification in November; the local detail is in my article on the 2026 rental decree in Ontinyent. Tourist lets of a country house go through Turisme Comunitat Valenciana: a responsible declaration and registration (Decreto 10/2021, which has its own category for rural houses; tourist-use registrations now need a municipal compatibility report and last five years), plus the national registration number (NRUA) that platforms demand since 2025. Rural tourism is a use the 2022 reform expressly allows for old masías, and the Mariola has a real market of walkers and weekenders; but it only works if the house is legal, because the registration starts with the planning report.
Farming the land is simpler than it looks: local contractors harvest and prune olives and almonds for a share of the crop, and keeping the land cultivated is what the planning rules expect. If the finca comes with an active agricultural holding, ask a tax adviser about the reliefs before you sign.
Frequently asked questions about fincas for sale in inland Valencia
Can a foreigner buy a finca in Spain?
Yes, with no restriction by nationality; EU and non-EU buyers follow the same rules. What differs is residence afterwards: EU citizens can simply move, non-EU citizens have the 90-days-in-180 limit without a visa.
Can I build a house on a plot of rural land in Valencia?
Only exceptionally: on common rural land, with a plot of at least one hectare (municipal plans often require more), covering no more than 2 % of it, with your own water and waste-water treatment and a registry note binding the plot to the house. On protected land, no. Buy with the house already there and legal.
What does a finca with a house cost in the Vall d’Albaida?
In November 2026, habitable country houses of 120 to 250 m² on 2,000 to 8,000 m² plots near Ontinyent, Albaida or Cocentaina are listed between 130,000 and 300,000 €; small houses on olive plots from 50,000 €; working fincas with hectares from 600,000 €.
How do I know if the well is legal?
Ask for its inscription in the Registro de Aguas of the Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar (Section B for private uses up to 7,000 m³ a year, or a concession above that) and the authorised volume and use. The right does not transfer automatically: you will apply for a new inscription after completion.
Is a masía a good investment for rural tourism?
It can be, in the Mariola especially, but only if the building is legal or legalisable and you budget the rehabilitation (in our area, 1,000 to 1,800 €/m² for an old masía) and the tourism registration. The asking price of a historic masía is the entry ticket, not the investment.
My conclusion (and how I can help)
A finca in the Sierra de Mariola or the Vall d’Albaida is one of the best-value country homes left in Mediterranean Spain, and the one that most rewards doing the homework. The buyers who end up happy are the ones who bought the paperwork first and the view second: a registered house, a registered well, a written right of way, a planning report in the file. The rest is olives, silence and a town with a market ten minutes away.
- Browse the country houses, fincas and masías for sale that we manage at Kapitalia, or the full portfolio across the Vall d’Albaida, La Costera, L’Alcoià and El Comtat. Tell us what you are looking for (land, water, distance to town) and we will send you fincas before they reach the portals.
- Already own a finca or a masía here and wondering what it is worth? Ask for a free valuation with real comparables from the comarca.
- Need a signed appraisal report or a preliminary planning and cadastral study of a plot before you make an offer, or someone to review an arras contract before you pay a deposit? Write to me at salvadorpalau@kapitalia.net or message me on WhatsApp at @salvapalau. Our offices are in Ontinyent, Xàtiva, Alcoi and Cocentaina, and we work in English.
See also: Buying a house in Ontinyent, Spain (2026) · Buying a house in Xàtiva, Spain (2026) · Buying a house in Alcoy, Spain (2026) · in Spanish, what to compare when buying a second-hand home.
Also available in: Español
Sources: Kapitalia listings as published on 2 November 2026 (asking prices); Decreto Legislativo 1/2021, TRLOTUP, articles 211, 214 and 228–231; Alicante Plaza, 13 June 2022, on Decreto Ley 4/2022 and pre-1975 rural buildings; Inspecciona, on the minimisation-of-territorial-impact procedure; Real Decreto Legislativo 7/2015, article 28.4, and Ley Hipotecaria, article 199; Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar, information sheet on private groundwater uses up to 7,000 m³ (2024); Wikipedia, Serra de Mariola Natural Park; Ley 3/1993 Forestal de la Comunitat Valenciana and Decreto 7/2004 on fire prevention; Ley 5/2025 of the Generalitat Valenciana, summary of the ITP and AJD changes from 1 June 2026; Cocampo, taxes on buying a rural finca; Decreto 10/2021 del Consell (tourist accommodation) and Real Decreto 1312/2024 (NRUA); Levante-EMV, 25 October 2026, on the Mas de la Penya Nova, as analysed in my Spanish article. Rehabilitation costs and all figures are orientative, dated November 2026, and do not replace an individual appraisal or legal and tax advice.
