Half the families who ask us about a Maresme villa now want a room to work in. The word despacho covers four different things in a Spanish listing, and only one of them survives a Monday of video calls.
The honest version is a room with four walls, a door that closes and a window: 7 to 9 m², a desk, a chair and a shelf. The second is the fourth bedroom with no wardrobe, photographed from the doorway with a plant on the desk. The third is a corner of the living room listed as zona de trabajo. The fourth, more common than you would think on the hills above Cabrils and Alella, is a converted garage or a mezzanine over the stairs, dark in winter and 32 degrees in July.
None of that is a lie. Spanish listings have no standard for despacho, so the word does whatever the owner needs it to do. Your job is to measure the room instead of reading the adjective.
Start with the desk. A 140 cm top takes a laptop, a monitor and a notebook. At 160 cm you can put two screens and still have room for papers. Behind the chair you need about 80 cm to stand up without shoving the wall, and the door has to open without trapping you at the desk. That puts a workable office at 7 to 9 m². Four or five square metres works only if the desk faces a window and the door opens outward. Below that you are renting a cupboard with a router.
Light from the side beats light from behind the screen or straight into it. North light is flat and steady, which is why studios like it and why it suits a room where you stare at a monitor for six hours. A south or west room in Maresme catches direct sun from late morning until eight in July, and by noon you will have the shutters down and the air conditioning on.
A small room with the door shut behaves like an oven. The split in the living room does nothing for it unless the door stays open, and an open door defeats the reason you wanted an office. Check whether that room has its own unit and whether the outdoor unit has somewhere sensible to sit. On a stone facade or in a listed building a new split needs a municipal licence, and inside an urbanización the community statutes have a say about anything visible from the street.
Winter is the other half of the problem. Houses on the north side of a Maresme hill sit at 15 or 16 degrees indoors in January, and a north-facing office is the coldest room in the house. If the only heat comes from a wood burner in the living room, you will be working in a jacket. Ask what heats that specific room and ask to see a January bill, not a July one. Nobody keeps the winter invoice in the folder they send you, which tells you something on its own.
A laptop pulls 65 watts. A monitor, a lamp and a phone charger add another 100. Then the air conditioning takes 1 to 1.2 kW, the pool pump 1 to 1.5 kW, and a 4.6 kW supply trips the moment the oven goes on. Most Maresme villas are contracted at 5.75 kW, older ones at 4.6. Ask for the potencia contratada and the last electricity invoice. Two screens plus air conditioning in August means 5.75 kW is the floor, and 6.9 or 9.2 is calmer.
Agencies almost never price an office as a separate line. A four or five-bedroom villa with a real closed room in Cabrils, Teià or Llavaneres asks €4,000–7,000 a month; in Supermaresme, Sant Berger or on the front line, €8,000–12,000. The same house without the room and without fibre is not much cheaper, so the office is a reason to pick one villa over another rather than a lever for the rent. Name the room in the contract, list the furniture that stays, and keep a 4G or 5G router in a drawer. It costs €60–150 and it has rescued more Monday mornings than any backup plan we know.
Tell us the room, the connection and the budget. We know which houses in Maresme have a real office and which have a desk under the stairs.
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