Best January sales figures for a decade
The Spanish real estate market started 2018 with force with the best January property sales figures for 10 years.
In January there were 176,911 property transfers in the registers, 13.2% more than in the previous January. When looking only at residential, there were 94,060 property sales, a 23.1% increase when compared to last January.
85.4% of purchases registered in January correspond to urban property, and 14.6% to rustic. In the case of urban property, 58.9% are home purchases.
The number of purchases of rural properties increased by 18.9% in January on an annual rate. The number of urban property sales increased by 17.3%.
17.5% of homes sold in January were new and 82.5% used, according to the latest figures from the INE.
The number of new homes sales increased by 23.5%. Sales of second-hand properties increased by 23.0%, when compared to January 2017.
Results by autonomous communities
In January, the total number of transferred properties registered in the property registers per 100,000 inhabitants reaches its highest values in La Rioja (833), Aragón (732) and Castilla y León (713).
Asturias (48.4%), Cantabria (22.6%) and Andalucía (21.7%) have the highest annual variation rates.
Comunidad Foral de Navarra (-1.7%), the Balearic Islands (0.6%) and Cataluña (4.1%) registered the lowest annual rates.
Looking only at residential property, the communities with the highest number of operations per 100,000 inhabitants are Valencia (190), the Balearic Islands (174) and Cantabria (144).
The communities with the highest annual increases in the number of home sales in January are Principado de Asturias (55.7%), Valencia (40.5%) and Región de Murcia (38.8%).
At the other end of the table we see Extremadura (1.3%), Aragón (5.2%), La Rioja and Cataluña (both with 8.2%) recorded the lowest annual variation rates in January.
Fernando Encinar, head of studies at idealista, says “January is usually a good month for sales, but the start of 2018 has been especially positive, both in terms of growth percentage and number of closed transactions; it is the best data since May 2008. The beginning of the year invites optimism to a sector that is strengthening. The fact that the number of operations has grown in all autonomous communities, except in Extremadura, is also a sign of a widespread recovery in demand, although it is taking place at different rates across the country. However, this data should alert us to the need to start building houses in some cities where the supply is reducing considerably due to increased demand. Otherwise price increases could accelerate aggressively”.
