Notaries report absolute stability in September Spanish property sales

Almost half of all purchases in September were financed by mortgage loans. The latest set of data regarding the residential property market to come from Spains notaries, reporting exactly the same total in September as in the same month last year after four consecutive year-on-year decrease in previous months, although at the same time the number of mortgages constituted to finance purchases rose by 10 per cent.

Occasionally statistics throw up barely credible coincidences, and on this occasion the provisional sales total of 42,538 exactly matches the one reported in September 2018, this would appear to confirm the impression that the level of activity in the real estate market of Spain is stabilising, coming as it does after a period of growth in the first few months of 2019 and then four consecutive year-on-year decreases. In a sense, though, stability is to be welcomed after the figures plummeted from 100,000 sales a month in 2007 to under 30,000 in 2013.

During the ninth month of the year, again according to the notaries figures, the average price paid for units of housing fell by 1 per cent in comparison with September 2018 to 1,444 euros per square metre. However, as ever it should be remembered this is a hard figure to analyse: variations in average price are not necessarily due to any nationwide trend, as they could be caused by more properties being sold in different regions of the country where prices are higher or lower, distorting the national average.

Meanwhile, the number of mortgages constituted on housing purchases during September was 10.2 per cent lower than last year at 21,055, with an average loan capital of 136,981 euros (4.7 per cent lower than in the same month last year). But the most significant statistic, it could be argued, is that as many as 49.5 per cent of all purchases in the month were financed by mortgage loans, close to being the highest proportion since 2011, while in these cases the mortgages accounted for an average of 74.9 per cent of the sale price.

Source: Spain News Today, November 2019