Third quarter Spanish property sales second-highest for five years

Up, up and away: the trajectory of Spanish property sales keeps on rising.

New data from Spain’s property registrar has revealed that 103,055 home sales were recorded in Spain between July and the end of September – which is the second-best quarterly performance for five years…

Analyzed against the same period in 2015, this means that 11.1% more Spanish homes changed hands during this year’s third quarter (Q3) as more buyers returned to the market over the course of 2016.

The quarter was also 4.4% stronger than the second quarter of the year, and marked the continuation of a rising trend that has seen every quarter grow in strength and sales transactions since 2010.

Taken as a 12-month running total, the 394,000 Spanish homes that have been sold since September 30 2015 marks a 13.2% increase on the previous 12-month period. Last year was itself a continuation of the growth seen in 2014 when Spain’s property market first emerged from a few years of contraction.

Looking back even further, the number of homes sold across Spain in the previous quarter is the best for five years, bar a strong end to 2011 that was largely driven by the mass fire sale of distressed properties.

This upward trend is set to continue into 2017 and well into the year after, believe many experts, given Spain’s own economic recovery and its consistent appeal as a holiday and homebuying destination for people from many of Europe’s – and the world’s – strongest economies.

However, the positivity was not universal, with the data revealing that the average price of a sold Spanish property in Q3 was actually 1.4% below figures recorded in the second quarter.

Analysts believe that this contraction in values – prices have generally been rising across Spain for more than 18 months now – is down to a contraction in the number of new build homes sold in the last quarter. New builds are typically more expensive than resale homes, and thus their presence in these figures boosts the average selling price.

The registrar data shows that new build homes accounted for just 17.1% of sales in Q3, down from closer to 21 per cent in the previous quarter.

Still, despite this sequential fall in the average selling price, a home in Spain typically changes hands today priced some 3.3% more than it did at the same point in 2015.