Over Three Quarters of the Spanish Homes Sold to Brits Were Resales

Over Three Quarters of the Spanish Homes Sold to Brits Were Resales

While it is still early days for 2016 it looks like three trends hinted at by the end of 2015 are coming true.

The first, and the most encouraging, trend is that the Spanish property market is recovering. It looks like both house prices and the number of properties being sold is on the rise.

Costa del Sol will always be a firm favourite place to buy property 

The second trend is that buying resales properties especially in the Costa del Sol are outpacing new properties. Second hand homes are being sold at a much faster rate than new properties. The third trend that is likely linked to the other two is that British buyers are coming back.

Brits were the buyers in one fifth of homes sold to foreigners in 2015. Data has emerged from the Spanish Ministry of Public Works that reveals that 76% of the properties that were resales were bought by British nationals.

At one point British buyers were all over the new properties being built in Spain. After the economy began tumbled during the past decade this interest went down. Now that the economy is more confident the British buyers are coming back and the property market in general is recovering.

The data shows that while there is still some interest in the new build market, especially among Scandinavian and Belgian buyers, the interest is still mostly in the resale market. Just over 69,000 homes were sold in 2015 to foreign investors. This was rise of 13% over 2014.

The reason that people are buying Spanish property has also changed a little since the market started to fall a decade ago. These days most people purchasing a house are interested in a holiday home rather than seeking to rent it out and make an income.

As a result of this shift the renting market in Spain has fallen each month for the past 35 months.