Spanish conveyance Solutions SpainThe transfer of property rights in Spain relating to residential housing started to show some small signs of recovery in May according to the national statistic office in Spain.
May 2014 figures for transfer of property rights in Spain
Whilst the transfers of all properties which includes, commercial, inherited, donations and bank repossessions remained under pressure in the area of habitable homes the figures saw some small improvements.
Between the month of April to May the sales of houses increased by 12.6% this is the same inter monthly increase as we had in 2013 and lower than the intermonth increase of 2011 and 2012 but a higher increase than between April 2010 and May 2010.
The actual sales of houses hit 28,124 homes sold in May of which 10,671 were new homes and 17,253 were resales. With sales of over 17,000 used properties this is the highest number sold in any month for over 12 months. Sales of new homes has dropped slightly in the last few month when looking at a 12 month figure and was lower than has been experienced for the first few months of 2014.
What are the key improvements in house sales
Driven by the increase in resale’s total sales of homes was up 5.4% in May in comparison to May of the previous year and for resale’s themselves this figure was an increase of 20.6%when looking at May last year and up 16% from April of this year pushing sales of used property into an small annual increase accumulated of 0.7%.
Total sales of houses remains down 7.7% accumulated for the year driven by the drop in new housing sales experienced in the first few months of 2014. Sales of new houses year on year since April appears however to have steadied and reflect more closely average sales of new homes in 2013.
Regional variations
The Balearics and the Canaries led the way for Spain in overall increase of house sales in the Balearics reaching an annual increase of 33.1%. In the areas most closely associated with nonresident buyers, buying in Spain, this being the Islands, Andalucía and Murcia all saw yearly increases. Only Madrid of the key Cities or regions saw a drop in May.
Andalucía remained the region with most sales selling in excess of 5,700 units outstripping the sales of homes in all other regions and Cities by quite some way.
The data suggests that whilst annual figures are still down on 2013, which in turn was a year of lower house sales than 2012 that the monthly figures are now showing in pockets significant if not slow improvements.
Anecdotal versus factual information
Some advisers providing legal protection for both buyers and sellers have reported a number of instances of prices being put up by sellers as the activity levels increase and this is across both used and new builds. Improvements are still in certain geographical pockets and improvements slow but anecdotal evidence of an improving market at last seems to be being backed up by formal data.