Activity in the housing market is recovering faster and faster after the abolition of most measures restricting people’s mobility. The recovery is reflected in an increase in real estate sales in Spain by 26.2% in the third quarter of the year to 154 thousand transactions in the period from July to September 2021.
According to the latest statistics from the real estate registry, an increase in transactions with foreign citizens has been recorded again.
The percentage of home purchases by foreigners in the third quarter again exceeded 10%, reaching 10.7%. This is more than 16,000 property purchases by foreigners last summer.
Despite these good figures, the impact of the pandemic and the consequences of Brexit are still being felt by British citizens, whose weight in the Spanish housing market is at an all-time low. In fact, for the first time since the registrars collected statistics, the British are not topping the list of home purchases by foreigners during the quarter.
In this case, Germans top the list, accounting for 10.4% of the total number of home purchases by foreigners in Spain, which exceeds 1,680 transactions. Thus, the British moved into second place with 9.9% and almost 1,600 purchases. They are followed by the French (7.8% and 1,262 purchases), Moroccans (6.5% and 1,055 purchases), Belgians (5.6%) and Romanians (5.3%).
The areas with the largest number of transactions with foreigners have a richer color.
The areas with the largest number of real estate purchases by foreigners as a percentage of their total number are the Balearic Islands (34.3%), the Canary Islands (23.6%), Valencia (19.7%), Mercia (17.4%), Andalusia (11.3%) and Catalonia (11%).
“The island and Mediterranean autonomous communities are those areas where there is the greatest intensity of foreign demand for housing, preferably corresponding to nationalities with higher per capita income, while nationalities who choose Spain as a place of work and prefer to buy a house have a more balanced geographical distribution throughout Spain”— the registrars say.
The Balearic Islands (34.3%), Alicante (33.5%) and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (27.6%) are the leaders in the regions with the largest foreign weight in the residential real estate market, followed by Malaga (26.5%), Girona (20.5%), Las Palmas (19.6%), Mercia (17.4%), Almeria (12.6%), Tarragona (11.6%) and Castellon (10.2%).
“As international geographical mobility recovers and confidence in the control of the pandemic increases, foreign demand will continue to grow, contributing to the maintenance of high activity in the residential real estate sector,” the registrars emphasize in their quarterly report.
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