08 February, 2017

By VIVA Team

Across Spain, the price of a home has risen by an average of 10.8% since 2014.

Across Spain, the price of a home has risen by an average of 10.8% since 2014.

Recent analysis of data of the Spanish real estate market from the National Statistics Institute (INE) shows that the average home value in the country has risen 10.8% over the past three years.

In 2016 alone, the nation’s housing price index showed that by the end of the third quarter last year, house prices were an average of 4% higher than during the same period in 2015. This reveals that for each year since 2014 – when prices generally bottomed out – home values have steadily increased by between 3 to 4% per annum…

This encouraging increase in the price of housing in Spain is a direct result – and driver – of rising interest in buying and selling homes in Spain. The recession years between 2007 and the first quarter of 2014 stunted growth and shattered confidence, but since Spain pulled clear of those dark days some 1.2 million homes sold in that period.

A great deal of those transactions have been driven by foreign demand, which contracted only slightly during the recession. But the INE data also reveals another encouraging trend – that of housing starts, ie, first-time buyers getting on to the property ladder.

In 2016, that figure rose above 60,000, and analysts expect a further 67,000 new housing starts this year. A combination of a strengthening economy, increased job security, more attractive mortgages and a property market that is still affordable but showing signs of growth means that the cocktail right now for upwardly mobile young Spaniards is rather rewarding for home investment.

The growth in new housing starts last year was 32% up on 2015, resulting in the number of young Spaniards living in rented accommodation to fall to just 17.5%, the data shows.

Indeed, finding rented accommodation in Spain is becoming increasingly tough – the country has the lowest proportion of homes for rent in any western European country, comprising just 2% of the housing stock of Spain.