Number of Spain home sales in first six months of year best since 2010

A combination of low interest rates, affordable property, favourable mortgages and a strong economy is making Spanish real estate supremely attractive.

Spanish daily El País has reported that the number of homes sold in the first six months of this year is the highest since 2010.

With June seeing 36,856 real estate transactions nationwide, the summer months are set to see a continuation of the strong trend first registered in April, a month in which year-on-year sales growth topped 19%…

This June, that growth was 19.5% up on June 2015, which also marked a three-year high for the month. Over the first six months of the year, some 207,593 homes have been sold in Spain, according to data from the Economy Ministry, with most activity centred in and around five of Spain’s largest cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante and Málaga, the latter of which has the perennially popular Costa del Sol right on its doorstep.

As already reported by VIVA, foreign investment is shoring up much of this transaction activity, with construction and real estate accounting for one-third of the €22 billion spent by foreign nationals in Spain last year.

Further analysis by the Institute of National Statistics (INE) shows that demand is returning for Spain’s luxury properties – of which the Costa del Sol in particular boasts a wide selection – as the country’s economic recovery begins to mirror the upturn observed in many other European and Western nations.

And this demand is set to grow stronger, at least according to research conducted by Bankinter, which forecast in a report last week that it expects Spain to see more than 480,000 property transactions in 2016 – a 10% increase on 2015. Prices, meanwhile, will show an average annual increase of between 3 and 5%, the bank said.

As the Spanish government keeps interest rates low to encourage spending, the attraction of pouring investment into bricks and mortar rather than savings bonds becomes ever more apparent, which should also help to boost the industry into 2017 and beyond, experts say.