The average price per m² in Hendaye is 4 992 €/m² for an apartment, based on actual notarised (DVF) sales. About 314 transactions are recorded each year.
Atmospheric illustration of Hendaye, at the southern tip of the Basque coast.
The average apartment price in Hendaye stands at 4 992 €/m², based on DVF transactions actually registered with notaries (DVF is the French record of notarised property sales). This average covers a segmented stock. The seafront and the Sokoburu quarter, around the marina and the great beach, bring together seaside developments and recent schemes, often in blocks with a view over the bay. The centre and the surroundings of the station gather more ordinary town housing, less exposed to seasonal demand. On the heights of the corniche and near the Abbadia estate, the Coastal Act limits building and makes supply scarce.
Prices from the DVF file (Demandes de valeurs foncières, published by the DGFiP), transactions actually recorded at the notary at municipality level. Cross-referenced with the Notaires de France - INSEE indices. Learn more about our methodology.
After 4 365 €/m² in 2021, the average price in Hendaye reaches 4 992 €/m² in 2026, an increase of roughly +14 % over the period.
The Hendaye market is active for a municipality of 18 102 inhabitants, with around 310 apartment sales recorded each year in the DVF data. That liquidity stems first from the structure of the stock, overwhelmingly made up of flats, and from the overlap of three sources of demand: households working on the Basque coast, second-home buyers, and working people settled on the Spanish side who find housing here a short journey from San Sebastián. The municipal territory, under eight square kilometres, leaves little free land.
Several factors sustain this price level. The border role keeps a year-round economy of services, retail and transport alive, backed by the Bidasoa-Txingudi consortium with Irun and Hondarribia. Seaside tourism, thalassotherapy and the marina add seasonal activity and demand for holiday bases. Against this, the Coastal Act constrains development of the corniche and the bay, and the change-of-use rules adopted by the Pays Basque urban community have since 2023 reduced the seasonal rental outlet, which redirects part of the stock towards permanent housing.
Hendaye sits clearly below the level of Anglet, its neighbour on the Basque coast, but above Bayonne, a town inland on the Adour estuary. The gap becomes wide with Pau, more than a hundred kilometres inland.
Hendaye split from the parish of Urrugne in 1598 and became a municipality in its own right, backing onto the Bidassoa that marks the border with Spain. The river makes its history: the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed there in 1659 on Pheasant Island, where Louis XIV met the king of Spain the following year. That border position has its downside, and the town was ravaged during the Franco-Spanish wars, particularly around 1793, before rebuilding in the nineteenth century. The town then amounted to little: a fishing harbour on the estuary, farms, and a territory of less than eight square kilometres squeezed between Urrugne, the ocean and the border.
The railway transformed the municipality. The line from Bordeaux to Irun made Hendaye a border station, the break point between the French and Spanish track gauges, and brought the first bathers. Between 1864 and 1879 the scholar and explorer Antoine d'Abbadie had the Abbadia castle-observatory built on the corniche, designed by Viollet-le-Duc and then Edmond Duthoit. From 1881 the seaside resort of Hendaye-Plage rose from the sands to a strict specification drawn up by the architect-developer Henry Martinet: regular plots, villas in the neo-Basque style, avenues opening towards the sea. A tramway linked the town to the beach from 1906 to 1937.
On 23 October 1940 the station hosted the meeting between Hitler and Franco, an episode that has remained attached to the town's name. The post-war years durably established the tourist economy and the cross-border role. In 1990 the Sokoburu marina was dug at the mouth of the Bidassoa: with nearly 890 berths, it ranks among the leading marinas of the Aquitaine coast and gave rise to a new quarter between the beach and the bay. At the end of the 1990s Hendaye joined with Irun and Hondarribia in the Bidasoa-Txingudi consortium, and in 2017 joined the Pays Basque urban community. From that history the town keeps three distinct wholes: the centre and the station, the resort of 1881, and the harbour quarter.
Hendaye has 18 102 inhabitants. According to INSEE, the French national statistics office, the municipality counts about 14 650 dwellings, of which nearly 60 % are main residences and 35 % second homes: more than one dwelling in three is not occupied year-round, which weighs on the rental market as well as on prices. Also according to INSEE, apartments account for nearly 77 % of the stock and 55 % of main residences are occupied by their owners. Buyers are split between working people employed in the Basque urban area or on the other side of the Bidassoa, retirees drawn by the climate and the services, and second-home purchasers from the south-west, from Paris and from Spain.
The average apartment price in Hendaye is 4 992 €/m², based on DVF transactions actually completed before notaries. This average covers marked gaps depending on the distance to the great beach, the view over the bay of Txingudi or over the ocean, the floor level, the presence of outdoor space and the condition of the building. A seafront apartment and a dwelling in the streets of the centre do not trade at the same level.
The ocean frontage concentrates demand: the boulevard de la Mer and the streets of the resort created in 1881, then the Sokoburu quarter, born of the marina opened in 1990, between the great beach and the bay. The surroundings of the station and the centre remain more affordable, with a stock of buildings from the 1960s to the 1990s. The corniche and the heights near the Abbadia estate mainly offer houses, in limited numbers.
The station, the terminus of the line from Bordeaux to Irun, is served by high-speed and regional trains of the Basque coast. The Topo, a Euskotren line, leaves from the neighbouring station and reaches San Sebastián in about thirty minutes, crossing the Bidassoa. The bridges towards Irun and Hondarribia put Spain a few minutes away by car, and the A63 motorway links Bayonne and then Bordeaux to the north.
Hendaye is one of the twenty-four municipalities of the Pays Basque urban community subject to the change-of-use rules. Since 2023, turning a second home into a furnished tourist let requires compensation, that is putting an equivalent dwelling back on the market in the same area, which severely restricts authorisations. The Conseil d'État has upheld that scheme. Any local rule should be checked with the town hall before a purchase intended for seasonal letting.
The market is overwhelmingly one of flats: according to INSEE, nearly 77 % of the municipality's dwellings are apartments, and the reference price relates to that segment. Houses are concentrated on the heights, towards the corniche and the surroundings of the Abbadia castle, on a municipal territory of less than eight square kilometres subject to the Coastal Act. They rarely come to market and trade above the level of apartments.
This analysis is published by Immover, an independent observatory founded by Antony Barbier. Data sourced from official sources (DVF, INSEE, Notaries of France).