Spain offers different types of property for rent and sale. For example, today, Spanish housing has enriched the international property market. However, there are still chalets and bungalows. Let’s find out how they differ from each other.
1. Chalet: A Small House That Stands Alone
In Spain, a house that has no neighbours behind the wall is called a “chalet.” “I see, but what about the villas?” — you may ask. As you know, this is also a separate house. It is easy to confuse a large chalet and a small villa.
In addition to dimensional characteristics, location plays a role. You can find chalets within the city, while villas are often located outside the city or in the suburbs. At the same time, in the south, especially in Andalusia, mountain chalets are gaining popularity.
One-Story Chalet
Chalets can be a single story, with areas from 40 square meters to 150 square meters. The land plot rarely goes beyond 500 square meters. Usually, several chalets are urbanised with a shared space and one pool.
“On the plus side, there are no neighbours behind the wall and no obligation to pay ‘comunidad’. This is the name used for utility bills for cleaning the entrance, landscaping the territory, lighting, and other services that fall on the shoulders of apartment owners in high-rise buildings and houses in gated complexes. If you have your plot at your disposal, you are your own management company and know which tree needs to be watered, what to tint, and so on”, — notes Sergey Sinyugin, the CEO of Virto Property.
Two-Story Chalet
Usually, chalets are built to be one-story. Today, in Spain, there are chalets with two or even three floors. The first floor can be occupied by a bathroom, a kitchen, a laundry room, as well as a salon and a terrace. In Spanish layouts, a salon is a large living room combined with a dining area. On the second floor, there is a bedroom, children’s room, and a second bathroom.
There are Mediterranean and modern styled chalets. The Mediterranean style is more common. It is characterised by the presence of arches and soft contours, beige and marine tones, tiles and furniture from natural materials.
An unusual feature for Nordic residents is the low foundation, which can even be decorative. This is due to the climate of the Pyrenees, where additional insulation from frozen ground is not needed.
2. Bungalows, Duplexes and Townhouses: How to Spot Them
Imagine that there is a longhouse of two floors, which consists of several houses with common sidewalls. It is important not to get confused by the names of objects in this house. Let’s clear things up.
Separate living spaces with different owners in such a house are named bungalows. The lower bungalow (ground floor) has a land plot, while the upper bungalow (second floor) has access to the roof. Both objects have independent entrances. It is noteworthy that Scandinavians absolutely love the upper bungalows for the chance to enjoy the sun on the rooftop solarium.
The size of the plot in the lower bungalows varies from 20 square meters to 800. The barbecue area is tiled, and there is a water hose. A dining area is located nearby.
The barbecue season in Spain lasts from early October until the end of May. The rest of the time, it is forbidden to start an open flame in public places to avoid fires. But during the season, many parks are equipped with everything from barbecues to skewers and have kid’s playgrounds. If you want to fry the meat in the summer, you need your plot. You can also plant citrus trees on your site.
And now the most important thing. When both bungalows, upper and lower, are owned by the same owner, the property is called a duplex. Thus, you have two floors with a total area of 100 square meters on average, a plot and a roof terrace.
There are neighbours only on the sides. In some countries, these described objects have been called townhouses since about the end of the previous century. A horizontal townhouse is a bungalow; a vertical one is a duplex, a corner one is a quad. You can find a wide variety of townhouses for sale in Costa Blanca, for example.
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Property Prices in Spain:
- apartments: from €35,000
- upper bungalow: from €65,000
- lower bungalow: from €70,000
- duplexes: from €90,000
- quads: from €100,000
- chalets: from €150,000
- villas: from €250,000
The prices may vary. For example, an urban chalet will cost more than a rural one. And any housing in closed urbanisation, accessible only to owners, can differ by upwards of 20%. This is often the case with newer bungalows.
