2016 set to be another great year for Spanish property

With 400,000 homes sold this year, 2015 was a good year for Spanish property… and 2016 promises to be even better.

Next year will see the Spanish property market continue the recovery seen throughout the course of 2015, according to data and analysis by appraisal company Tinsa.

Price rises are expected pretty much nationwide in 2016, with Tinsa data showing that average prices rose by 1.9% in November compared to a year prior…

This increase marked an acceleration of price rises, with home values going up month-by-month throughout the course of the year.

By region, the housing markets of Barcelona and Madrid performed the best in November, with price rises averaging 3%. The Costa del Sol and other popular coastal regions saw prices rise by 1.4% on average.

And although there were price falls in some regions (notably Murcia which saw housing values fall by 3.3%), Tinsa and the property division of BBVA – the second largest bank in Spain – are both confident that growth in most regions will be evident next year, with prices generally experiencing stable increases.

All of Spain’s most popular property regions will show an improvement on 2015, BBVA forecast, and mortgage lending is also set to increase, thus propelling an even greater number of sales transactions next year, too.

The bank’s official data for the summer shows that home sales rose 9.5% in August compared to the same month in 2014, while September saw an 8.7% annual increase. Similar figures are likely for October and November, with BBVA projecting that the number of homes bought in Spain will reach around 400,000 in 2015 – a 10% rise on 2014.

The overhang of unsold, never-lived-in new properties is also set to shrink in 2016 as an acute shortage of available homes in some of the more in-demand regions means that buyers will begin snapping up properties that have so far proven difficult to sell.

The forthcoming general election will go some way towards determining just how healthy Spain’s economy will look in 2016, but all of the signs appear to suggest that GDP growth will continue, which will also help spur Spain’s property market, both in terms of transaction volume and average prices.