Valencia Property Blog

In 2021 we wrote this exact article and looked at how much you would need to earn or have in passive income via pensions, investments etc to live a comfortable life in Valencia. Since then we have had a lot of inflation in the system the World over post-Covid and the supply chain shocks that came as a result. Therefore we have been asked to update the article for 2025 and today we will look at how the cost of living compares in Valencia compared with 2021 and also once again compare Valencia with other popular international destinations.

When we get asked the question "how affordable is Valencia?", or "how much does it cost to live there per month?", the answer is always the same, it depends. It depends on you, your family circumstances, what you do and how you live but generally the answer is always similar “Cheaper than where you are now!”

In today's article we are going to look at those typical examples of what it costs in terms of property, food, transport, entertainment and more so you get an idea of the day to day costs of living here compared with other places that you may be living in right now.

The Basic Requirements

We have looked at how much money you need to have in order to get the non-lucrative visa in Valencia before and it’s interesting to see how that tallies with what is needed to live here comfortably. To get the NLV you must have 400% of the IPREM which stood at 615 euros in 2024 meaning 2460 Euros for a single person and 1x IPREM for each additional family member, meaning 3075 Euros pcm for a couple or 4305 Euros for a family of four. Remember that this can be a monthly amount or this amount multiplied by 12 deposited in a bank and for the renewal in the second year that deposit amount would have to be doubled as the renewal would be for two years (The renewal has now increased to four years but the deposited amount remains the same at 2 years of funds).

However the question we are asking here is whether those amounts mean you can have a comfortable yet not extravagant lifestyle in Valencia with those minimum numbers and it is here where our old friend Numbeo comes into the equation. Numbeo is a website where people living in a place report on the cost of living and other factors about living in a place. It is crowd sourced and almost real time information about how much it really costs to live somewhere. You can choose cities from around the World and get a good idea about the cost of living and other factors. The more people reporting, the more reliable the figures. Last year in Valencia there were over 615 reports from over 130 people so it's a good spread and means the numbers of most things are pretty reliable.

What do the numbers from Numbeo say about Valencia for 2025?

The good news is that Valencia continues to be a relatively inexpensive place to live compared with other major cities in Spain and internationally. We'll look at some comparisons in this article.

Bear in mind though that if you are working here and receiving your money here then salaries tend to be lower than in other countries and this needs to be taken into consideration but we'll look into that later. The median salary in Valencia is thought to be around 1900-2000 Euros per month in 2025 (The last available official figures from 2023 placed it at 1739 Euros per month).

Going out to eat a "menu del día" will cost you around 15 euros per head these days, the cinema will cost around 9 Euros, milk is around 1 Euro, 12 eggs 2,50, a mid range bottle of wine under 5 Euros, a capuccino 2 Euros, bananas around 1,50, chicken around 7 Euros a kilo and beer is just essentially cheap. The basics are still good even though to us here they may look more expensive than four years ago which of course most things are.

Cost of Living in Valencia

The cost of living in Valencia continues to be affordable though. Take a look at the overview at this link. Just to point out a few things though from the table below. A family of four on the basic amount for the NLV would be able to pay up to 1900 Euros pcm for rent, as their estimated monthly costs would be around 2416 Euros, and still have enough to live on comfortably. Average rents in Valencia city according to Numbeo vary from 1172-1700 Euros pcm for a three bedroomed flat. (These figures may rise more very soon as the lack of supply continues to bite). A single person on the NLV would be able to pay up to 1730 Euros pcm and the range to rent a one bedroom flat goes from 816-1057 Euros pcm according to Numbeo (Again take these figures with a pinch of salt as the reported rental prices are from people already living here who got their rental at least a year ago). If you buy a place outright then obviously you have a lot more disposable income and if you buy with a mortgage then you'll probably still have more as mortgages are generally cheaper per month than rentals currently and that difference is increasing year on year at the moment.

Quality of Life in Valencia

One of the great things about Numbeo is that they also rank non financial factors such as quality of life. Valencia ranks fantastically on this scale. What constitutes quality of life? Take a look.

Valencia ranks high where it wants to rank highly in terms of safety, health care and climate and low where ranking high would be a negative such as cost of living, property price to income ratio, traffic commute and pollution. It also ranks well for crime and safety with crime levels low in general and violent crimes being very low. Being able to walk safely on the streets is also an excellent consideration.

National Comparisons

When we compare Valencia with other places in Spain then Valencia stands out even more. Compared with Madrid and then Barcelona...

Valencia is considerably cheaper and more affordable than Madrid and Barcelona and for the majority of people coming into the country with fixed pensions or incomes from elsewhere this is a huge factor. Even when we compare with other places in Spain, Valencia comes out particularly well, especially on the all important local purchasing power index, Malaga, a similar Mediterranean city, is a good example.

This is another reason why Valencia continues to attract people moving from Barcelona, Madrid and other places such as Malaga. Maintaining their income while living in a more affordable (And liveable) city is an important consideration for many Spanish people and wages tend to be higher in Valencia than Andalucia.

International Comparisons

When we start to look more internationally then we tend to look at places where our clients come from. In the last edition of this in 2021 we talked about Amsterdam, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London for example and of course all of them are much more expensive to live in than Valencia meaning Valencia looks very affordable to our clients from these places, especially if they are bringing their current income with them whether that is through their jobs, investments or pensions.

However, taking into account the basic numbers we get some surprises. Amsterdam for example, despite the high cost of living has a local purchasing power much higher than Valencia. But if you bring that income to Valencia then the cost of living reduces massively whilst at the same time quality of life increases exponentially.

This is not the case with London though. Despite higher wages the local purchasing power in London and Valencia is essentially the same taking into account wages and costs.

Again, if you bring your current income with you from London then Valencia becomes hugely attractive. However if you really want to see a massive difference then we need to look at the differences between Valencia and the USA. Starting with New York, everything is cheaper in Valencia and even local purchasing power is higher despite New York's much higher salaries.

Obviously if you can reduce your rental cost by 76% and your general cost of living by 59% then your money goes a lot, lot further (And maybe even allows you to not really worry about any extra tax burdens) Nevertheless, San Franciso is a bit different. Local purchasing power in Valencia is a lot worse than there, (this is because of average wages being really high in SF). Again though, if you bring that huge salary to Valencia then you will feel even better off than a New Yorker.

For Los Angeles we have a similar pattern but as salaries are not quite as high then the local purchasing power difference is not as high. Nevertheless, bringing that salary or income to Valencia makes you live like a king.

But Life Is About More Than Money

Even when we consider that Valencia ranks really well in terms of local purchasing power, especially when bringing income from elsewhere, life is about more than money though isn't it? As we saw above Valencia ranks very highly on the quality of life index with a score just over 200. How does this compare with other places mentioned above?

The only place that beats Valencia is Amsterdam with a score of 203 and let's face it, if we look at the climate then we wipe the floor with Amsterdam ;-). New York compares extremely badly with Valencia despite those high salaries. As we said, there's more to life than money.

Historical Data About Valencia

If we choose to look at Valencia and its prices over the last few years then there is no doubt that prices have risen just like everywhere in the World over that time. You can see the trends here. However, average local salaries have risen by almost 40% in the last four years helped by the rises in the minimum wage put in place by central government.

Also reported prices for 2024 are in many cases lower than in 2023. What has risen massively in the last few years are rental prices and purchase prices of property, a trend that we reported on last week on the blog. Public transport, interest rates, sports and leisure and internet access are actually cheaper now than were reported 14 years ago!

Conclusions

Valencia is the best ranked place in Spain and Southern Europe in terms of quality of life. Spain as a whole does really well in this ranking and that's because Spain has the balance between work, leisure and lifestyle down to a T. As one of our clients commented on our Facebook page this week, "Spain doesn't have holidays, they have an endless holiday with occasional work breaks".

Valencia is also the best value place to live in terms of cost of living outside of the Balkans in Southern Europe (except for Braga in Portugal!). However, it beats everywhere on the local purchasing power index, wages in Portugal are generally lower outside of Lisbon and possibly Porto. Despite Pristina being affordable it's not really an option is it!

When we take into account Europe as a whole Valencia ranks 16th for total quality of life factors behind, mostly, places in the Netherlands and Switzerland, where you need a lot of money to live like that, while ranking first among those at the top for affordability and climate and almost at the top for health care. Worldwide Valencia ranks 18th with just Adelaide and Brisbane breaking into the top 18 from outside Europe in terms of quality of life.

Remember though Numbeo is not the only ranking, Forbes Magazine through their rankings taken from Internations respondents of immigrants around the World ranks Valencia as number one again, we always seem to be there.

The Valencia Property Podcast

We brought out our latest Valencia Property podcast last week and in it we had a round table discussion about the market, talked about the ending of the Golden visa and more including answering that question, why are people interested in coming to live in Valencia? Have a listen as it's worth it to know what happened in 2024, what may happen in 2025 and to get to know us more before you buy your place here in Valencia.

Quiz Winners

We have two winners of our Xmas quiz and giveaway and they are... drum roll...

Matt Palmer and Ruth Bonet. Both got a good percentage of the answers in our quiz and will be getting a copy of our prize "The Best Hikes of Valencian Community" by Dmitry Blatov. Matt, Ruth, message me next week to arrange delivery as I know you both read the blog. (Matt had a bit of an advantage of course as he bought War of the Roses featured in the 2024 collection as one of our best descriptions!)

If you want to read our book then click here to take a look.