Spanish property sales increase significantly in October

According to data from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) and the College of Notaries, Spanish property sales increased significantly in October.

However the figures supplied by both organisations vary somewhat. The INE puts the number of residential property transactions at 43,536, which, according to its historical data, represents a 15.8% increase compared to October 2017 and was 1.8% greater than September’s total.

However, notary data estimates that 49,515 home transactions were registered in the 31-day period, a figure that it considers to be an interannual growth of 8.4%.

Although there is a disparity of around 6,000 transactions, an important conclusion drawn from INE’s data is that October’s purchasing figures outperformed September’s for the first time in over four years.

The news that purchasing activity picked up – by over 5% – from September to October is cast-iron evidence of the reinvigoration of the Spanish property market at all times of the year and the near-certainty of over 500,000 homes being sold by the end of 2018.

Of the 43,536 transactions registered by the National Institute of Statistics, 9,092 pertained to the region of Andalucía. This is a share of over 20% of the Spanish property sales total, as has been the case consistently for several months.

To give you an idea of the year-on-year performance in Andalucía alone, October performed 25.9% better than the same month in 2017, which is ten percentage points higher than the average interannual increase for the whole Spanish territory.