Off-plan or resale at Hacienda del Álamo: which one is actually for you
By Home Kare · 9 min read · Buyer’s Guide
Buyers arrive at Hacienda del Álamo with a budget and a rough idea of what they want, and then hit a fork nobody warned them about. There are two completely different ways to buy here, and they suit two completely different people.
New build gets sold hard, because there is a sales office and a brochure and someone whose job it is to show you the show home. Resale has none of that. It has an owner who wants to sell and an agent with fourteen other listings.
That imbalance is why most buyers look at new build first, and why a fair number of them end up buying resale in the end.
Here is the comparison nobody in a sales office will give you.
A note on the figures below. Tax rates and cost estimates in this guide are approximate and current at the time of writing. Rates change, and reduced rates depend on your personal circumstances. Confirm your own position before you budget on any of it.
What you are actually choosing between
The obvious difference is age. The real differences are timing, certainty and what happens in year one.
Off-plan means buying before it is finished, sometimes before it is started. You pay in stages, you wait, and what you get at the end is what the plans said, in a phase where everything around you is also new.
Key-ready new build is the same product finished. Shorter wait, less flexibility on finishes, usually a higher price than the same unit sold off-plan two years earlier.
Resale is buying from an owner. What you see is what exists. Furniture is often included, the garden has grown, and so has everything else — including any problem the previous owner chose not to fix.
Where the money actually differs
The headline prices are not comparable, because the taxes are different and so is what comes included.
New build is subject to 10% IVA plus 2% AJD in the Región de Murcia — around 12% on top of the price. Resale is subject to ITP at 7.75%, reduced from 8% in July 2025. Reduced ITP rates of 3% or 4% exist for younger buyers, large families, registered disability and protected housing, but they apply to habitual residence and carry price and income limits, so they rarely apply to a holiday purchase here.
On a €200,000 property that difference is roughly €24,000 in tax on a new build against €15,500 on a resale — about €8,500, before anything else is counted.
Then there is what you get for the money:
| New build | Resale | |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase tax | ~12% (IVA + AJD) | 7.75% (ITP) |
| Furniture | Rarely included | Often included |
| White goods | Sometimes extra | Usually there |
| Garden and landscaping | Frequently extra | Established |
| Air conditioning | Often an upgrade | Usually installed |
| Blinds, lighting, curtains | Almost never included | There |
That last block is what catches people out. Getting a new build from handover to genuinely liveable — furniture, aircon, blinds, garden, white goods — commonly runs €15,000–€30,000 depending on size and taste. A new build and a resale at the same asking price are not the same purchase.
Current rates for both taxes are published by the Región de Murcia and the Agencia Tributaria. Check them for the year you buy.
The case for off-plan
There are good reasons to buy off-plan here, and they are not the ones in the brochure.
- Price at the start of a phase. Early releases are usually the cheapest that phase will ever be.
- Choice of plot. First buyers get the corner units, the ones with the view, the ones not facing the bin store.
- Specification. You can change finishes and layouts while it is still a drawing.
- Everything is new, with a builder’s guarantee behind it and no inherited problems.
- Staged payments. Your money goes in over time rather than all at once.
The trade-off is that you are buying a promise. Completion dates move, and six months is not unusual. The finished unit is not always what the render suggested. And you will not know what your neighbours are like, because they do not exist yet.
The case for resale
Resale gets dismissed as the cheap option, which misses the point entirely.
- You can see it. Not a render, not a show home furnished with three-quarter-scale beds to make rooms look bigger.
- You can visit the community. Talk to owners. See the pool in August rather than in a photograph.
- It is finished. Curtains, aircon, garden, kitchen. You arrive and it works.
- The costs are knowable. Real community fees, real IBI receipts, real bills from someone who has actually lived there.
- Established phases have working communities. Mature gardens, functioning administration, known problems.
- Negotiation exists. A developer has a price list. An owner has a reason for selling.
The trade-off is condition. You inherit whatever the last owner did, and whatever they did not. Which brings us to the part that matters most.
The check that decides it
Whichever route you take, the question is the same: what happens in the first twelve months?
With new build, year one is snagging. Doors that stick, tiling that is not quite right, a shower that drains slowly. All fixable under guarantee, all requiring you to be here or to have someone here on your behalf. A snagging list is only worth what the follow-up is worth.
With resale, year one is discovery. The thing a survey did not catch, the appliance already on its way out, the community derrama approved three months before you signed. A proper look at the property and at the community’s minutes removes most of this. A survey here typically costs €300–€600, which is not much against the things it finds.
The honest test: off-plan suits buyers with time and no urgency. Resale suits buyers who want to use the place this year. Budget matters less than which of those two you are.
The mistakes we see most
- Comparing a furnished resale to an unfurnished new build on price alone. They are different products.
- Not reading the community minutes before buying resale. Approved derramas transfer to you.
- Treating an off-plan completion date as a promise. Build in a margin.
- Buying a phase because the show home was nice. The show home is not your unit.
- Skipping the survey because it looks fine. Murcia summers hide as much as they reveal.
- Forgetting the cost of getting from empty shell to liveable. It is rarely small.
What we would do
If you can wait eighteen months and you want exactly your specification, off-plan in a new phase is a good buy, and always has been here.
If you want to be sitting on your own terrace this summer, and you want to know your running costs before you sign rather than after, resale wins and it is not close.
Neither is the smart choice in the abstract. They are answers to different questions, and the question is yours. Before you commit either way, it is worth reading our guide to what a property actually costs to run here, because that number outlives the purchase price by about twenty years.
Home Kare works at Hacienda del Álamo every day, on both sides of this. Tell us your budget and when you want to be using it, and we will tell you honestly which of the two fits — including when the answer is the one we are not selling.
→ Talk to us about buying here
This article is for general information and is not legal, tax or financial advice. All figures are approximate; taxes, specifications and availability change. Check your own position with a qualified professional before committing to a purchase.