Purchases of homes in Spain

February 2015

Released on the 9th of April were the statics for the purchase of homes in Spain relating to February of 2015.

Overall purchase of all types of property transfers of ownership showed a small increase of 5.2% when compared to the same month of the previous year but where the transfer related to dwellings or residential property the increase was 15.5%.

Of all property transfers 64,862 were actual sales, with Inheritance and other titles making up the lion share of the rest.

In total 146,065 properties transferred ownership.

Sales of Dwellings

Of all urban properties transferred 55.8% of these were related to dwellings. The total amount of dwellings transferring ownership was 29,714 and added to this a further 11,591 Rustic properties also changed hands.

The amount of dwellings sold was 11.1% below that registered in January of 2015. In 2014 the drop between these two months was 15.7% so there is a slight improvement. In the last 5 years only 2011 showed an increase in sales of dwellings when looking at the previous month of the same year.

New homes versus Resales

The number of brand new houses sold within February was down by 28.6% when compared to February 2014 and the amount of resale’s was up 50.4% over the same period. This is bad news for developers and good news for private sellers and perhaps reflects that in general the buying public and new owners of property feel they get better value for money from a resale than a brand new property.

Regional sales

The number homes sold region to region varied considerably. Andalucía sold the most dwellings totaling 6,149 sales, Cataluña, Valencia and Madrid all achieved over 4,000 sales.

In terms of percentage increases against last year The Balearics was up 21.7%, Andalucía up 20.4% Cataluña up 23.2% and Madrid up 28.4%. Of the favored international buyer regions only the Canaries showed a year on year decrease.

Bank repossessions

One potentially worrying trend was that “Other Titles” data which includes the transfer of property from a mortgage holder back to the bank under a repossession order totaled 19,615 properties in February. This is 30% of the total number of homes transferred and 65% of the total dwellings actually sold by way of merchanting rather than by means of donation, swap or Inheritance.

This suggests that an oversupply of property will continue for some time to come and that whilst prices are stabilizing in Spain we are some way off seeing a rapid increase in prices.