Martil seafront apartment

Most of Morocco's cheap coast faces the Atlantic, which means cold water, wind and surf. Martil is on the other side. Sitting on the Mediterranean just below Tetouan, it offers warm, calm, genuinely swimmable water from June through October, a long groomed beach and a palm-lined corniche that fills every summer evening with families walking, eating ice cream and watching the sea.

This apartment is a two-bedroom, one-bathroom unit of seventy-eight square metres, one street back from the corniche — around eighty metres from the sand. It sits in a well-kept low-rise block with a lift, a secure entrance and a resident caretaker, which is the normal arrangement here and keeps the building tidy year-round.

The layout is simple and bright: an open living and dining room with glazed doors to a balcony, a separate fitted kitchen, two double bedrooms and a tiled bathroom. Floors are ceramic throughout, walls are plain white, and the balcony catches the sea breeze and a slice of blue water between the buildings opposite. It is the kind of property you can lock up and leave for six months without worry.

The beach is the point. Martil's sand is fine and light-gold, the shelf is gentle, and because this is the Mediterranean rather than the Atlantic there is no serious swell to contend with. In summer the promenade fills with cafes and beach clubs; in winter it empties out and becomes a long quiet walk with the Rif mountains rising behind the town.

The location is also unusually well connected for Morocco. Tetouan's small airport is eight kilometres away, Tangier's international airport around an hour, and the Ceuta border — with fast ferries to Algeciras in Spain — about forty minutes by road. For a European owner, that means a genuinely short door-to-door journey, which changes how often a place like this actually gets used.

Tetouan itself, eleven kilometres inland, supplies everything a small beach town cannot: hypermarkets, hospitals, universities, and a UNESCO-listed medina that is one of the best-preserved Andalusian old towns in North Africa. Chefchaouen, the blue mountain town, is ninety minutes away and makes an easy day trip for visiting friends.

Rental income here is strongly seasonal but robust in season. July and August see enormous domestic demand as Moroccan families and the diaspora returning from Europe descend on the northern coast; two-bedroom apartments near the corniche let easily and at premium weekly rates. Outside summer, occupancy is lower, though Tetouan's student and professional market absorbs some longer lets.

Ownership costs are low and predictable. Building service charges cover the caretaker, lift and common cleaning and typically run a few hundred dirhams a month. Municipal tax on a property at this value is minor. Because it is an apartment rather than a house, there is no roof, garden or facade to maintain personally.

The purchase itself follows Moroccan standard practice: a notary handles the deed and registration, title is verified at the Conservation Foncière, and total transaction costs come to roughly six to seven per cent. Foreigners buy freehold apartments without restriction. For units in newer blocks it is worth confirming the building's permis d'habiter and that the syndic accounts are in order.

Honest drawbacks: Martil in August is crowded and loud, the architecture is functional rather than charming, and the town has none of the historic texture of Essaouira or Asilah. What it has instead is warm swimming water, an eighty-metre walk to the sand, two airports within an hour and a price of 760,000 dirhams — which for a Mediterranean beachfront apartment is close to unheard of anywhere else on that sea.