October Spanish property sales up by 6.5 per cent

The latest figures to be published by the government’s central statistics unit regarding residential property sales in Spain show that during October a total of 29,369 transactions were registered, representing an increase of 6.5% in comparison to the same month last year and continuing an upward trend which has seen higher figures in every month of 2016 except January.

This trend has resulted in the year-to-date total after ten months reaching 340,000, 13.9% higher than at the same point in 2015, while the running 12-monthly total is 397,000, the highest since mid-2011, and everything seems to indicate that in general terms demand is continuing to grow. As a knock-on effect, of course, there is likely to be upward pressure on market prices.

However, the increase in sales figures in October was far from universal in the 17 regions of Spain. Among the eleven regional increases the most significant are those reported in Asturias (21.3%), Catalunya (19.8%), Aragón (19.2%) and Extremadura (16.2%), but on the other hand there were falls in sales activity in six regions, including Navarra (-24.3%), Murcia (23.1%) and Galicia (16.7%).

As has been the norm throughout almost the whole of this year, the busiest markets were those of the Balearic Islands, with 113 transactions per 100,000 inhabitants of buying age, and the Comunidad Valenciana (107).

Source: Spain News Today, December 2016