First quarter pricing data for Spanish property shows 3.8% rise

The steady price momentum shows that Spain is off to an encouraging start in 2018.

The latest statistics from respected real estate valuation firm Tinsa have been published for Spain’s first quarter and they show that the average home was 3.8 per cent more expensive at the end of March 2018 than it was at the equivalent time last year…

This increase is a continuation of quarterly increases that stretch back more than three years and thus reflect the steady momentum that home values have gathered in Spain since the market bottomed out at the tail end of 2014.

Analysis of Tinsa’s data over that period shows an average annual increase of 5.2% in nationwide home prices, although a typical Spanish property is still around 33% cheaper today than it was in 2007 – the year that represented both the peak and the nadir of the last property boom in Spain.

This time, however, there is no boom, but rather a steady inflation of the sector that is encouraging both homebuyers and the banks alike. Indeed, recent data shows that average home values rose 4.3% nationwide in 2017.

Among the regions of Spain, there continued to be wide variation in the levels of increases, with Madrid property some 15.5% more expensive at the end of the first quarter this year compared to last – an increase that is perhaps a bit too steep to be sustainable but rather typical of EU capital cities at the moment – while on the Balearic islands the increase was 10.5%.

The more remote and less populated regions of Spain, notably Extremadura and Galicia, actually recorded slight quarterly price declines for the first time in three quarters, while steady in the middle was the Malaga province, which enjoyed a four per cent increase in its property values over this period.