How a town gets its grade — and where the data runs out

Everyday comfort

35% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

How pleasant the year actually is — sunshine and mild temperatures, penalising both cold winters and punishing summer heat — from decades of reanalysis data at the town's own location.

This is half the default climate pillar, and it is the biggest hole in the dataset: it has only been computed for a fraction of France and Italy so far. The coverage table below says exactly how much.

Beach season

35% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country · warm/coastal profile only

A long usable warm season plus a mild winter — the Mediterranean second-home question rather than the year-round-living one.

Deliberately not the inverse of everyday comfort: a place can score well on both. It is used only by the warm/coastal profile and never enters the default grade. Coverage is currently almost nil, so that profile falls back to the standard climate pillar.

Wildfire exposure

25% of this pillar · lower is better · absolute 30-year probability

The chance of a damaging wildfire near the town within the next 30 years, built from satellite fire detections around it.

An absolute probability, not a ranking. That matters: ranking hazards against a country where most towns have none would flatten a real tenfold difference into nearly the same score.

Earthquake exposure

10% of this pillar · lower is better · absolute 30-year probability

The chance of a damaging earthquake within 30 years, from the recorded earthquake catalogue around the town.

Also an absolute 30-year probability. Within the climate pillar, the worst hazard governs rather than the average — averaging lets an absent hazard mask a near-certain one.

Tsunami exposure

0% of this pillar · lower is better · absolute 30-year probability · not in the default grade

Recorded tsunami exposure near the town, on the same absolute 30-year scale as the other hazards.

Computed and shown on the town's page, but weighted zero in the default grade — re-weighting it would move every coastal ranking, and that decision has not been taken. It is a real number when you look at it, not a placeholder.

Population trend

40% of this pillar · higher is better · absolute % per year

How fast the town is gaining or losing registered residents, as a compound annual rate — the strongest single signal here, and the one that catches rural depopulation.

Unlike almost everything else on this page, this is an absolute rate rather than a ranking against its own country: −1.2%/yr means the same thing in Galicia and in the Auvergne. It measures the register, not the people, and a municipal boundary change reads as a collapse or a surge — which is why the ranked lists refuse to publish anything beyond ±5%/yr. Each town's own page states the years its figure was measured over, because the four statistics offices publish different windows.

Density

15% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

People per square kilometre.

Derived from population and surface area rather than published as such. Municipal boundaries vary enormously in size between these four countries, so this reads as a rough town-versus-countryside signal, not a precise one.

Things to do

25% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

Density of places worth going to — food, culture, leisure, tourism, nature — per square kilometre, counted from OpenStreetMap.

Only scored where the country's map data has actually been imported. Where it has not, this contributes nothing to the grade rather than counting as zero: a town is not empty just because we have not looked.

Foreign residents

20% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

The share of residents who are foreign nationals — a proxy for how easy the landing is for an incoming foreign buyer.

Not measured identically everywhere: Spain, France and Italy count residents by nationality, while Portugal counts holders of a residence permit, which is a narrower group. Compare within a country more confidently than across them.

Air connectivity

50% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

How reachable international airports are, weighted by distance, so a town near one big hub and a town near three small ones score differently.

Everyday essentials

50% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

How many of pharmacy, supermarket, school and doctor exist inside the town's own boundary, out of four.

Containment, not distance to the nearest one. Distance from a municipal centre is meaningless when the centre is an arbitrary point in a large rural boundary; "is there a pharmacy in this town at all" is a question with an answer.

Price per m²

100% of this pillar · lower is better · ranked within its own country

The published price per square metre. Cheaper scores better — this pillar is affordability, not desirability.

The single coarsest number on the site. For most of Spain and all of Portugal the only published figure is a provincial or district one, which is labelled as a proxy wherever it appears and is why no report compares your asking price against a local median in those countries.

Price appreciation

30% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

How fast prices have risen, annualised, over roughly the last five years.

Past movement, not a forecast. The window is not the same everywhere, so the town's own page states the years the figure was measured over rather than leaving "5y" in a label to imply it.

Market liquidity

25% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

Sales per 1,000 dwellings — how readily property here actually changes hands, which is what determines whether you can sell again.

Gross rental yield

25% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

A year of rent as a percentage of the purchase price.

Gross, not net: no tax, no management, no vacancy, no maintenance. And it is one published figure divided by another, so it inherits the coarseness of both — where either side is a zone or province average, the page says so.

Tourism intensity

20% of this pillar · higher is better · ranked within its own country

Tourist bed places per 1,000 inhabitants — short-let demand, and equally a warning about summer crowding.

Counted differently in each country: registered tourist dwellings in Spain, measured bed places in Italy, and an equivalence that includes second homes in France, without which French resorts read as empty. Read it within a country.