English | 

British property buyers returning to Spain

By Mas Property

on Tue May 22 2018

Figures published by Spain’s notaries the 14’th of May show that the number of properties purchased by non-Spaniards in this country during the second half of 2017 reached 49,553, roughly the same level as before the collapse of the market in late 2007 and 14.1 per cent higher than in the equivalent period the year before.

There are of course many different nationalities contributing to this total, but buyers from the UK remain by some way the most numerous, according to the notaries data. British buyers numbered 7,246 between June and December, accounting for 14.3 per cent of all purchases made by foreigners in Spain, with 5,003 of those relating to non-residents.

It would seem, then, that the reticence among UK nationals when it came to buying homes in Spain in the months following the Brexit referendum has declined, and that any fears over what the status of Britons in this country might be after next spring have dissipated. The number of purchases made by Brits was 7.8 per cent higher than in the second half of 2016, following decreases of 23 per cent and 16 per cent in late 2016 and early 2017, as confidence returned to the buying public in the UK.

The next most important foreign markets for Spanish property during the period were those of France, which accounted for 8.4 per cent of all sales, Germany (8.1 per cent) and Rumania (6.8 per cent), and sales to all major nationalities except the Swiss increased.

As a result, the notaries calculate that 19.5 per cent of all sales in the second half of last year were to non-Spaniards, a proportion which has remained roughly stable for the last five years, and it can be deduced therefore that 2.8 per cent (or one in 36) were to UK nationals.

The figures reported by the notaries regarding property purchases by non-Spaniards are consistently higher than those produced by the countrys property registrars. This is probably due to the fact that almost all foreign buyers prefer to perform the official signing of deeds before a notary, although in fact it is not obligatory if no mortgage is involved: some Spaniards opt to waive this procedure, hence discounting themselves from the notaries statistical records.

Source: Spanish News Today, May 2015

Share this news on