Valencia Property Blog

It's always been a truism that if you start as you mean to go on then you are more prepared in life. The initial days, weeks and months when you move to Valencia can really affect your ongoing situation here whether that is in terms of hobbies, habits and homelife or as we are going to talk about today in terms of monthly and ongoing costs. Accepting the status quo when you arrive on many of these things can make your life here much more expensive as you settle in and the days become weeks, months and year. You didn't move to Valencia to see your money drain from your account on direct debits and unnecessary overspends. Here's how to set things up properly from the start or even fix them if nobody told you this when you originally arrived.

Most people arriving from the UK, US or elsewhere simply replicate the habits they had at home. They accept the default supplier for electricity, take the first insurance quote without checking, let the bank charge what it charges without questioning. A bit of effort at the start can set you up in a much better way for the rest of your time here. Let's see how.

Electricity

Let's start where we have been before. There are a wide variety of electricity suppliers and prices. We are not talking about minor differences here either. Depending on your contract you might be paying anything between 8c per kilowatt hour and 25c for the same electricity. Last month we used over 500kw due to the massive use of AC but luckily our tariff is the former not the latter! The supplier and tariff you choose are important and it's not as simple as just choosing online. You need to drill down into your usage, your system (if you have solar and batteries for example) and then compare like with like. Luckily for you we already have an article about that.

Current recommendation as I write: Octopus

Gas

The same rules apply. Many people just take on the supplier they get on buying. Generally there is a cheaper supplier out there. The savings aren't as huge as with electricity but they exist and should be looked into.

Current Recommendation: Naturgy

Home Insurance

Spanish insurers vary wildly on price for the same coverage. It's worth comparing just to check. Now if you have a mortgage you may be tied into your bank's cover at least for the first year. It is however worth looking into at the end of that year because banks tend to increase year on year and before you realise anything you are paying double what you were originally quoted without making any claims. I know because this happened to me. However I only noticed after ten years!

Current Recommendation: Linea Directa

Car Insurance

The same principle applies here too. If you have a car here, and many of our clients don't when they live in the city as they don't need one, then your first quote will probably be a lot more than you could potentially find elsewhere. Shop around. This is one thing you should check every year when you live here though for sure as they sneak in rises and there are always new companies looking to get market share with offers. Nevertheless, make sure to look at online opinions of the companies when an accident has happened and see how quick they are to pay out or if they even do pay out. It's not great to have cheap car insurance that doesn't pay when you need it.

Current Recommendation: Allianz

Private Health Insurance

This is an important one and a big one. You may have got the first insurance offered to you in order to get your NLV or your DNV for example and you may have done it online and taken the first one offered. That's normal as among the maelstrom of things you need to set up you might not have time to investigate insurance fully. It's normally overpriced unless you have talked with us first and contacted our broker for a quote of course. Our whole company has health insurance through our broker and when there is a better option they let us know and we change companies which saves us a lot of money over the years. Simple. The broker does the shopping around for you which saves a lot of headaches about who will have that exact coverage you may need.

Current Recommendation: Our Broker Gidea

Alarm/Security

Most properties in the city don't need an alarm or security and this means owners who insist on one are paying up to 600 euros a year for peace of mind they might not need. If you are living in a property then it's rare you need one. However, if you are not there then it might be a different story. In the next few weeks I'll be telling one of those stories about squatters and security.

If you have a house then an alarm might be something to give you peace of mind as they are easier to break into than apartments but most people don't have them because there aren't many house break-ins in populated places. If you have a house in the middle of nowhere then an alarm might well be a good option.

Alarm companies have a range of prices so it's best to shop around here too. What level of security will work for you? A basic system with connection to the alarm company and potentially the police will be cheaper than an all singing all dancing smoke bomb included alarm system but if you are really worried then that might be the one for you. I told a friend about that type of alarm this week and he got really up for a new installation.

Current Recommendation: Verisure

Bank Charges

To start off with you will probably need a Spanish bank account from a major high street bank to be able to transfer your money into and pay for the property you buy. However, when you have been here for a while you may want to change when you find out about charges that you weren't told about. As soon as you don't have insurance with your bank or other ties to them charges may come in.

At that point it might be in your interest to change to a challenger bank or even, perish the thought, a bank that actually pays you interest on your money rather than draining your account with charges. Obviously new banks such as Wise, Revolut, N26 etc... generally have better options than the high street banks because they don't have to maintain a high street presence. Nevertheless, they cannot supply you initially with what you may need for completion so it's best to look into this as your main bank account only once you are established here.

Current Recommendation: Revolut (Spain)

Internet

Fibre based internet is fast and cheap in Valencia and there are plenty of options for which company to use. However, you will probably find that the best internet provider might well be a company that has a package for you including our next category.

Telephone/Mobile

The virtual operators have changed this market for good. Legacy providers such as O2 (Telefonica), Vodafone and Orange have been forced into similar package offerings as Digi and others massively undercut their rates.

Usually these companies provide a package with home internet, mobile phones with unlimited data and even an actual home phone line, yeah they still exist. There is no best advice here because packages and offers change regularly and the best offer this week might not be the best next week and one bit of advice is key. Check what happens at the end of the tie-in period, usually one year, because at that point prices invariably rise and you will need to look again at the best option for your particular case.

Current Recommendation: Digi

Gestoria/Admin/Accountancy

These are definitely worth shopping around for because the same services can cost considerably more or less from different gestores. This is partiularly true of tax filings each year and basic services like car registration, company filing etc...

Current Recommendation: Soler y Balaguer (If you speak Spanish)

Shopping Costs

Moving onto ongoing habitual costs which don't need to be so much, just because your local supermarket is the nearest it doesn't mean it's the cheapest. If you are unlucky enough to have an Hipercor nearest and you decide to use that for convenience sake then expect to pay up to double the price for similar foods than you would pay elsewhere. It's the same the World over (except not everywhere has Hipercor, compare Waitrose prices with Lidl for example). Walking a little more to your local cheaper supermarket, fresh food market or individual specialist stores can make a huge difference even if it's not as convenient. It's not just price though with foodstuffs, it's quality. There might be a great local coffee blender, a fruit shop where they get only the best quality or a butchers with specialist cuts nearby but if you just walk into the local supermarket you'll never find them.

Current Recommendation: Mercadona/Family Cash/Local Markets

Transport

As mentioned above, many of our clients here don't have a car. Why not? It's because Valencia has one of the best public transport networks in Spain. However, many new arrivals default to taxis, Uber or Cabify out of habit because that's what you had to do "back home" Well home is here now and there are better ways of getting around. Others assume they need a car and even a second car because that's what life required "back home". Before you make either of those commitments, look at the bono system.

The metropolitan area is served by metro, tram, bus and Cercanías rail, all integrated under the Metrovalencia and EMT networks. Single fares add up quickly despite being really cheap, but the bono cards change things radically. A ten-journey metro bono costs around €8.50 normally compared to €1.50 per single journey, a saving of one third per trip. However 40% price reductions have been announced by the govt to encourage people onto public transport meaning a SUMA 10 ticket for example with ten journeys is now €4.50, 45 cents per journey. For regular commuters or anyone making more than a handful of journeys a week, the annual Abono pass reduces the cost further still.

Compare that against what taxis or rideshare services cost at Valencia prices and the difference is huge. A taxi habit across a year can easily run to €2-3,000 for someone making regular trips in the city and that few minutes saved becomes an expensive habit. The equivalent bono usage might cost a tenth of that so get to know the timetables, routes and lines of the metro, trains and buses as soon as you can for a major saving. Or you could just walk or bike!

If you are living in the city, price up what a car and/or second car actually costs you annually: insurance, MOT, road tax, fuel, parking and maintenance and compare it honestly against what public transport would cost you for the same journeys. For many people in Valencia city the car is an expensive item that spends most of its time parked and that garage space doesn't come cheap either.

Current Recommendation: SUMA10 ticket and Valenbisi to get around under your own steam.

Subscriptions

Set and forget. That's what the subscription services want you to do each month. This cost is not Spain-specific but it catches almost everyone out because we all forget what we have signed up for and a bad Netflix habit can very easily become a bad HBO, Paramount+, Disney+ and more habit. In many cases you get these services for just one programme and when it finishes you forget to end it and meanwhile the enshitification of the services ups the price, reduces the available offer and adds in ads that you originally paid to avoid. When you move here you may carry over whatever subscriptions you had at home, add a few more during the chaos of settling in and then forget about them. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, a newspaper or two, cloud storage, a VPN, a language app you used for three weeks, they very quickly and quietly stack up and you never use them.

Two things make this worse in the Spanish context. First, some subscriptions price in dollars or pounds and charge your Spanish account at the prevailing exchange rate, which means you are also suffering any currency fluctuations. Second, the annual renewal trap. Just like insurance and telephone deals, services that offer a cheap introductory rate shift to full price after year one usually without any notification giving you time to stop the subscription. You only notice after the money is taken out.

The way to sort this is relatively simple but only catches what has been paid out already. Go through your bank statements for the last three months and list every recurring charge. Cancel anything you have not used in the last month or two. For dollar or pound-denominated subscriptions, check whether a Spanish or European equivalent exists at a lower euro price, it usually does (Sometimes being behind a VPN can get amazing bargains).

Do this once a year and you will almost certainly find something you had forgotten about entirely. This happened to me last year with an internet subscription in Asturias where I am writing this from. They phoned to "renew" our contract but what they did was add a second one. I only noticed it last month when I got here. We got the money back luckily. It catches us all out because all companies do it knowing that people's forgetfulness increases their bottom line massively and I'm massively forgetful, we all are, there's lots going on! Next month Adobe have promised to remind me seven days before that my free trial I used yesterday to edit the sound quality of the podcast is up. I wonder if I will see any notification or I will have to pay a month to notice and cancel.

Current Recommendation: Keep the VPN and make it NordVPN. Get rid of all the rest. Get a dodgy box or Firestick and stick it to the man!

Sports

You'll want to keep fit to enjoy everything Valencia has to offer of course but there is a huge disparity in prices in gyms and sports facilities around the city. Some of the low cost gym chains are under half the price of the more exclusive ones without the reduction in quality. The only caveat here is that some of the more exclusive gyms may well have a swimming pool but usually you are just paying for their higher marketing spend.

The same is true of the ever more ubiquitous Padel court rental. The differences in hourly costs for court rental are huge depending on where you are renting and of course if you play a lot then membership of a club might work out cheaper than individual court rental.

And the most important thing you need to remember is that Spain is a brilliant place for public municipally owned sports facilities of all types, for all body types, ages and experience.

Current Recommendation: Municipal Gyms, Facilities and Pools (And don't forget the summer pools if it's not swimming but more cooling down that is important)

If you do all of this on or after arrival you'll set yourself up for a much cheaper rate of fixed costs and day to day costs on your life in Spain without having to cut back on anything. It might be the case that not all of this is applicable to you because you already have some of the services described above. But I'm pretty sure the advice there will save you some money and remember, starting as you mean to go on means ongoing savings are compunded each week, each month and year after year.

Our Bill Optimisation Service

We have a bill optimisation service only for our clients at Valencia Property. Some time in the future we may open it up to others but currently we don't have the time or the structure set up.

Going through all of these categories of costs when you have just moved country, or when life is simply busy, is not everyone's idea of a good use of a weekend. It should be but the beach, paella, cocktails and the mountains are tempting sirens instead and wouldn't it be good to tell someone you "have a person for doing that" while sipping one of those cocktails. As mentioned above Valencia Property offers a bill optimisation review for our new property owners where we go through the current suppliers, contracts and recurring costs, identify where they are overpaying and tell them exactly what to switch and how. If that sounds useful, get in touch and tell us you are interested in it and we will let you know what when we actually open it to the public and what it might cost. Or maybe just buy a place with us and we can do it for you. Whatever you decide we have a pdf you can download here with all of the categories and you can see an image version below. You can start work on it yourself.

The Latest (Epic) Podcast

It's one of the longer ones but that's because it is choc-full of information and analysis. Everything you need to know about the market and a couple of well deserved jibes aimed at Elon Musk as there always should be in any respectable company or discussion. Have a listen and remember to share it with friends. Sales Down Prices Up. What Happened?

Stepping Stone Rental of the Week

Everything is in order. You've finally arrived in Valencia, ready to explore a new city... but the moment you step through the front door, your plans suddenly become a little less urgent.

There's something about this living room. It's warm, inviting, and wonderfully peaceful: the kind of space that makes you want to curl up with a book, watch a film, or simply enjoy the quiet for a while. It feels like home from the very beginning.

Eventually, curiosity wins and you head outside. Welcome to Arrancapins, one of Valencia's underrated neighbourhoods. It rarely makes the Instagram reels, but that's part of its charm. The area is filled with independent cafés, fantastic restaurants, lively terraces, and neighbourhood bars where conversations seem to last all evening. It's a place that locals love, and it's easy to see why.

Back at the apartment, the living room looks out over the leafy trees surrounding the historic Mercado de Abastos, now a vibrant civic and sports centre. The mature canopy creates a surprisingly green outlook, with branches gently swaying outside the windows and adding a sense of calm that's hard to find so close to the city.

Despite its peaceful setting, you're only a short walk from Valencia's city centre, public transport, and the metro, making it easy to reach every corner of the city whenever you choose.

But don't be surprised if, after a long day, the place you're most looking forward to is coming home.