On the up: 13th straight month of rising property sales in Spain

For the past 13 months, the number of homes sold in Spain has increased, with resale property transactions up by 42.9% this year.

Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) has released data this week showing that the number of property transactions in Spain has increased for the 13^th month in a row.

According to the INE figures, September saw 30,711 homes change hands over the course of the month, marking a 13.8 per cent increase on the same month in 2014 and more than a year of monthly increases…

Of those properties sold, 80.1 per cent were resale properties – marking an even greater shift away from new home sales in Spain. The data also looked at property transactions for this year alone, finding that resale transactions are up a massive 42.9 per cent in 2015 when compared to the first nine months of last year.

By way of contrast, new build home transactions have dropped by 35.3 per cent over the same period.

By region, the Comunidad Valenciana region saw the highest rate of transactions per population at 123 sales per 100,000 people, with Andalucía in fifth at 93 transactions per 100,000 inhabitants.

Essentially, all of Spain’s Mediterranean regions have seen good movement in the past month, while even the inland areas have enjoyed an uptick in fortunes: the INE data shows that Extremadura has registered a 49.2 per cent increase in home sales compared to last year, with La Rioja (36.1 per cent) and Catalonia (27.9 per cent) also performing strongly.

Demand for the more inland regions tends to be driven by Spaniards themselves rather than foreign buyers, so with both the coastal regions and the less touristy places performing well, the signs are strong that the seeds of this recovery have been confidently sown.