Independent and accurate property prices in Spain

Download the latest Spanish House Price Index
pdf format 360Kbytes

The Kyero.com Spanish House Price Index is free to download.

It's updated and published quarterly to evaluate the advertised prices of 100,000 Spanish properties.

---

Kyero.com Spanish House Price Index
(Reprint permission granted when this line and hyperlink included)

Six spreadsheets showing the number of house sales broken down by sales to foreigners and the relative split between newly constructed property and resales. The last spreadsheet includes data on social or subsidised housing for comparison.

Notes on all these figures are at the bottom of the page.

1. Number of property sales - including subsidised (xls)
2. Number of property sales - excluding subsidised (xls)
3. Number of sales - new construction (xls)
4. Number of sales - resales (xls)
5. Number of sales to foreign residents (xls)
6. All spreadsheets (zip)

After writing about the decline of foreign property transactions, I got my wrists slapped by Luisa at Mirodali Properties.

She quite rightly pointed out that, by combining sales figures for new-build properties and resales, I had (unintentionally) distorted the actual growth rates for each province.

This is because a new-build property essentially gets 'sold' prior to construction but the sale is only recorded after construction. Hence, the growth rates of new-build completions actually reflect buying activity that is two, three or more years old.

Compare this to the sale of a resale property which is notarised within a few months of a buyer saying 'Yes, that's the house I want' and you begin to see the problem.

By combining new-build and resales growth rates, I added apples and oranges and made bananas - my apologies.

Another facet I did mention but perhaps didn't stress enough is that the figures I analysed were for foreign buyers only - not all purchases.

Here's a revised spreadsheet (keeping apples and oranges separate this time).

Luisa was absolutely spot-on - mixing numbers for new-build properties and resales is meaningless. Here's what struck me when comparing the number of resales transactions between Q2 2006 and Q2 2007:

1. Overall, resales transactions dropped by almost 20% from 145,000 to 116,000



2. Andalucia resales fell overall by 13% despite 23% more purchases by foreigners. Spanish resale purchases fell by 17%.



3. Granada province was the jewel in the crown of Andalucia showing an overall 19% increase in resales transactions - a reflection of both Spanish and foreign buying trends.



4. Apart from Granada, every other province in Andalucia recorded an overall decline in resales transactions, despite increased activity in many provinces from foreign buyers. Spanish buyers, who account for approximately 85% of all resale purchases only increased their purchasing in Granada by 14%.



5. The Canary Islands overall saw 16% more resale purchases in Q2 2007 compared to Q2 2006 - largely thanks to 73% more foreign purchases but Spanish purchases increased by 4% too.



6. The Balearic Islands also saw a healthy increase in foreign purchases - up by 18% from 817 to 960.



7. Foreign purchases now account for 15% of all resales transactions. Proportionally, more foreigners are buying in Spain than ever before - favouring the regions of:
   
   Andalucia (up from 9% to 13%)
   The Balearic Islands (up from 20% to 24%)
   The Canary Islands (up from 17% to 26%)
   Valencia (up from 23% to 26%)
   Murcia (up from 23% to 25%).
   
   (Percentages are the proportion of all purchases made by foreigners)



8. Foreign interest declined in many regions - significantly in Calatlunya and Madrid - down by 10% and 25% respectively.

In summary, it seems as though Spanish buying activity is cooling faster than foreign activity. Perhaps this is because the Spanish economy is more reliant on the construction industry than elsewhere in Europe. In essence, as the construction boom has ground to a halt, there are more unemployed construction workers with less spare cash than previously.

Martin Dell, Kyero.com

• Original data is freely available to download from the web site of the Ministerio de Vivienda. No changes have been made to the source information other than for clarity of presentation and translation into English.
• New construction is defined as properties less than 2 years old. These figures *might* include property purchased off plan and 'flipped' or resold in the same period and while the property is still technically 'new'
• Resales are defined as any property older than two years - again, this may not strictly correlate to a property having been sold a number of times
• Except where specifically mentioned, all figures exclude sales of subsidised or social housing.
• Sales of urban and rural land are excluded.
• Sales to 'foreigners' are categorised as resident, non-resident and 'other'. For the sake of clarity, only figures for foreign residents in Spain are presented here as they account for the vast majority of cases.
• Actual prices are likely to be unreliable due to the fact that some of the sales price passes from buyer to seller 'under the table'. This amount is never notarised and therefore cannot feature in the MVIV figures.
• As the Spanish government increases their efforts to stamp-out these 'black money' practices, house prices might 'appear' to be increasing when, in fact, a proportion of that increase must be attributed to a larger propeortion of the actual sales value being notarised.