It’s Confirmed; Spanish Property Market grew 13.6% in 2016

It’s Confirmed; Spanish Property Market grew 13.6% in 2016

As new data came in each month during 2016, it seemed to be painting an incredible picture; the likes of which one might expect to find in the Louvre. As each month passed, the news continued to get better, so it’s not surprising at all that the data from the end of the year, published just last week by the central statistics unit, showed that the property market in Spain grew 13.6%in 2016.

Its fantastic news for Spain and confirms the up trend in property

This impressive figure is based on the transaction data from all 17 autonomous regions in Spain; showing that 403,866 homes changed hands in 2016.

As if being 13.6% higher than in 2015 wasn’t impressive enough, this figure also represented a 26.7% increase over 2014.

One of the most significant figures, however, was that there was a sales increase in each of the autonomous regions in Spain. Some flew high, and some only climbed a little, but this still represents a 100% positive trend, which is definitely good news for the real estate industry in 2017, and the Spanish economy as a whole.

The Balaerics saw the largest year-on-year growth in property sales, registering an increase in transactions of 31% in 2016 over 2015. Great performances were also seen in Catalunya, Asturias, Málaga, and Extremadura.

On top of this, an increase in sales volume was reported for 23 of the past 24 months, which would suggest the trend will continue into 2017 and potentially even 2018.

Something else that was interesting about the data was that analysis shows a majority of the sales were resale's property; as only 18.6% of the homes sold in 2016 were new builds. This marks the third year in a row with falling new home sales, which suggests that there could be a drop in supply of new home builds; great news for the construction industry in Spain.

Amount of Foreign Buyers Grew Higher Than Spanish Buyers in Spanish Property Market

Amount of Foreign Buyers Grew Higher Than Spanish Buyers in Spanish Property Market

Costa de sol property for sale continues to be in demand

Data has emerged that shows the amount of non-Spanish property buyers in Spain grew by 12.9% in 2015. Roughly 1 in 5 homes sold in Spain in 2015 was sold to a foreign buyer.

Overall a grand total of 76,780 homes were sold to foreigners in Spain. This was a big increase on the number sold in 2014 and was much higher than the 9% increase in Spanish buyers.

A total of 383,987 homes were sold in Spain 2015. Outside of native buyers the most buyers came from Britain. British buyers accounted for 20.6% of all the homes sold to non-Spanish buyers.

British interest also grew more than any other country. The number of homes sold to British buyers was up a whopping 37.7%; over 4 times the increase in growth for Spanish buyers.

British property buyers bought a total of 15,810 homes last year. They were definitely the biggest foreign national group. France came in second with 8.8% of the homes sold to non-nationals going to the French. Next came the Germans at 7.5%, Belgians at 5.7% and Italians at 5.3%.

The sixth-largest nationality were the Romanians. They made up 5.3% of all the homes sold to foreign nationals. This was a massive growth of 59% on the previous year. The amount of Russian interest dropped a little and the amount of American interest stayed roughly the same.

Most of the property sold to a foreign buyer was in Andalucía with 20.5% of all the homes sold to foreign nationals in the city. This suggests that the climate, infrastructure and culture of the entire Costa del Sol region is bringing in the buyers.

The Valencia region was the place where the most property was sold to foreign buyers though. Valencia is home to Costa Blanca and 27.6% of the homes sold to foreign nationals were in the Valencia region. Other popular regions were Catalunya at 15.3% and the Canary Islands at 10.1%.