Apartment 66 in words

Apartment 66 at Costa Natura

<Apartment 66> at Costa Natura is a first-floor apartment looking out at the palmtree tops in a garden paradise literally right on the edge of the Mediterranean. Costa Natura itself is a 25-year-old architect-designed ikonic urban community built in the pisturesque style of an Andalucian hillside "white village". One of Estepona's quietest, fully-maintained sandy beaches is just 200 metres away down a flight of private shrub-lined steps and across a private open lawn. The beach is one of Spain's leading official naturist beaches and has its own all-day chiringuito (beach bar). Costa Natura's immediate next-door-neighbour (only 200m away) is the prestigious international five-star Gran Hotel Elba with its linked Thalasso Spa.

<Apartment 66> is one of the largest of the Costa Natura open-plan designs. The layout of the apartment has been architect-planned to provide a very relaxed setting for family holidays that is also especially suitable for relaxed full-time retirement living or a longstay "working from home" lifestyle in a quiet urbanization that has been described as a "paradise".⁽¹⁾ It is an ideal, ready-resourced setting for a writer or a business-man or -woman able to work through the internet.⁽²⁾ There also is satellite television.

An airy first-floor apartment with wall-to-wall, room-high glass sliding doors, <Apartment 66> offers a very spacious, secure, open-plan living area (21'x14'), with a large open terrace (21'x 11') looking out onto a majestic palm-tree grove and beautiful gardens, with Mediterranean views across the Bahia de Estepona (Estepona Bay) to Estepona itself. It is perfect for quality entertaining, with the terrace comfortably able to accomodate formal dinner parties of 10 and 12 people. There is a romantically-curtained separate double-bedded master bedroom, with ample living-room space for casual sofabeds for another five family or guests.

The terrace and master bedroom face east and catch the brilliant morning sun for a sunshine breakfast, but by midday the apartment is in cool, cool shade for the summer afternoons and evenings and has cooled right down for the night-time sleeping hours.

Costa Natura, internationally-famous as one of the world's leading naturist resorts, is a gated, crime-free, traffic-free environment. Its facilities include a restaurant-café with regular evening piano-bar-style entertainment, an outsize swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna, extensive sunbathing areas, sports facilities ranging from petanque and mini-tennis to volley-ball and archery, and its own seven-day-a-week mini-market for naturist convenience. Owners have secure car-port parking.

For anyone looking to buy somewhere which has letting-income potential when they are not using the apartment, Costa Natura has its own internationally-promoted, professionally-managed 'rental pool'. In 2007 apartments such as <Apartment 66> rented out for €138.50 (£108) a day during the summer high season and €63 (£49), during the winter months. Local-area rental take-up is expected to spiral once the new, near-by Disney development begins operating, probably in 2009.

<Apartment 66> is offered for sale furnished, extensively re-decorated and with a new €15,000 kitchen re-build in March 2007 that was just one part of the modernisation and re-styling. The owners are in residence.

Professionaly valued at €229,000 for mortgage purposes in July (2007), the apartment is for sale at €155 000.

Help with financing. Depending upon your personal circumstances, help with financing is likely to be readily available. There will be many mortgaging options with totally reputable mortgage companies (we have a very helpful Halifax Hispania mortgage, interest-only for the first 12 years), with "Lifetime Loans" an option for the over-60s ... information on Lifetime Loans and other financial issues from www.blevinsfranksinternational.com.