Mortgage Activity in Spain Increased in November by 32%

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Mortgage Activity in Spain Increased in November by 32%

November was an incredible month for the Spanish property market given the 32% growth month-on-month.

As the stats for the end of 2016 start coming in, it’s increasingly clear that the year was a successful one for Spain in a number of ways. The country saw considerable improvement in tourism to the economy as a whole. No industry has seen the level of positivity that the property industry has though.

The central statistics unit of the Spanish government shows that there was a 32% increase in mortgage approvals in November 2016 compared to November 2015. Overall 25.413 mortgages were approved in the month.

This would be encouraging by itself, but when you also consider the greater trends as a whole, it becomes a stronger sign of success. Overall there was a 15% increase in mortgage approvals during the first 11 months of 2016 compared to the same time period in 2015; reaching a total of 260,581.

It’s expected that December will see this total figure increased by over 20,000 for the full year-end total.

If there are that many mortgage approvals in December, it means that there were over 280,000 mortgages approved in 2016 across Spain. While the idea of a “healthy” number has become a little skewed by the boom-and-bust nature of the real estate sector in Spain, there’s still plenty of steady growth, and that’s encouraging.

Here is something to consider; There were over 100,000 mortgages approved per month for much of the last peak for the Spanish property market. That covers 2005 and 2007. This changed a lot after the depression settled in as only 12,000 mortgages were approved in August 2013.

It was impossible to maintain the higher figure, but the smaller figure is just too low. That’s why steady growth somewhere in the middle is just right. At least for now.