Confirmed: Spain’s property market grew a massive 13.6% in 2016

Spain’s property market is in rude health, growing on 2015, strong in all regions, and likely to push up construction activity.

The drip-drip of monthly data on Spain’s property market over the course of 2016 painted a picture that was rosier than an English summer garden in full bloom. With each passing month, the news was getting better and better, so it is no great surprise that the end-of-year data published late last week by the government’s central statistics unit shows that the market grew a massive 13.6% in 2016…

This figure is based on actual transaction data of all of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions, and shows that a total of 403,866 homes were bought and sold in 2016.

What’s more, while this number represented a 13.6% increase on 2015, it was also 26.7% higher than 2014.

Perhaps most significantly, however, was the fact that each and every one of Spain’s 17 regions recorded a sales increase. Some soared, others merely climbed slightly, but the trend was 100% positive, and that bodes extremely well for the real estate industry in 2017, as well as the wider Spanish economy.

The largest year-on-year growth in property sales was recorded in the Balearics, which registered 31% more transactions in 2016 than in 2015. Catalunya, Extremadura, Asturias and Málaga also performed well.

Further, 23 of the past 24 months have recorded increased sales volumes, which strongly suggests that the trend is set and 2017 – and probably 2018 – will see similar levels of steady growth.

Another interesting analysis of the data shows that the majority of property sales were resale homes, with new builds comprising just 18.6% of all transactions in 2016. This is the third year in a row that new home sales have fallen, which suggests that there could finally be a shortage of new build properties available for sale in Spain – and that is music to the ears of the Spanish construction industry.