Mortgage activity in Spain increases for 24 months straight

Banks are more willing to lend, buyers are more willing to buy – it is a good time right now for Spanish property.

There are numerous signs that the Spanish property market is in rather rude health right now: economic data, real estate research and surveys, even one’s own eyes can see that urbanisations are fuller, roads are busier and the expat bubbles that bounce along the Mediterranean coast are expanding by the day…

And recent figures published last week by Spain’s central statistics unit would appear to prove beyond any doubt that the country is currently in the midst of a solid and sustained recovery.

Figures from May, the most recent available, have revealed that there were 34% more mortgages approved for Spanish property that month than there were for the same month in 2015. This increase also marked the 24^th straight month of increases in Spanish mortgages – which is two years of growth.

In total, May saw 26,579 mortgages inscribed, taking the number of new mortgages for the first five months of the year to 121,000, which is a 19.7% increase when compared to the same period last year.

When the statisticians looked back over the past 12 months they also saw a 20% increase compared to the year prior, with 265,000 mortgages signed off in Spain between May 2015 and May 2016.

This data is nationwide, and when the analysts narrowed in on certain regions they were encouraged to find that all 17 autonomous communities of Spain recorded an increase in mortgage activity. Areas where increases in approvals were higher than the national average include Aragon – which saw a 51.6% increase – and the Balearics and the Basque Country, both of which saw mortgage approvals increase by 66.9%.

Nationwide, the average loan approved to buyers stood at €104,480, which was actually 0.8% below the average mortgage capital approved last May. However, despite this slight decrease, many other statistics published in recent months show that average property prices across Spain are increasing steadily.