05 June, 2015

By VIVA Team

Only Madrid saw more mortgage approvals in March than Andalucía.

The latest data from Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) has revealed that the number of residential mortgages approved in Spain in March increased by 19.7 per cent on last year’s figures…

For Andalucía the increase was below the national average at 11.9 per cent, but in terms of overall numbers only Madrid saw more mortgage approvals.

In March, lenders approved 3,397 mortgages in Andalucía, which is a solid reflection of a property market that has recovered after a few shaky years during and immediately after the last Spanish recession.

The INE data reflected an ongoing trend of recovery and growing confidence in Spanish property. March was the tenth consecutive month that the number of mortgage approvals had grown, with the end of the month also signalling the end of the first quarter of the year – a quarter that saw 62,017 mortgages registered, which is a 22.9 per cent increase on the same period in 2014.

The average loan capital of a typical Spanish mortgage has also risen by 27.4 per cent in the space of a year, reflecting recovering property values and a willingness by banks to loosen their lending criteria in order to get the market moving once again.

In March, all but three of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities saw an increase in mortgage lending, and while today’s figures are some way off the estimated 100,000 mortgages being approved every month in 2007 (on average), this steady growth is a welcome piece of good news for a property sector that has matured admirably over the past 18 months.

The recovery has largely been driven – in the Costa del Sol particularly – by British buyers. Armed with a strong pound and a natural affinity to the Spanish property market, UK investors have ploughed more capital into the region’s property market over the past 12 months than any other nation. The same is true for the tourism industry, too – a pincer movement of property investment and happy holidays that the Brits are driving forward with quite some gusto.