Some positive property news in Spain

Last updated on October 28th, 2019 at 04:34 pm.

In the current environment it is pleasing to see some rather more positive statistics emerging for Spanish property owners. The current sales figures for Spanish property reported in The Land Registry* (el registro de propriedades) are promising and suggest a healthy interest from foreigners in buying a place in Spain.

Spanish property trends bring the  good news  that in 2012, a total of 24,938 Spanish properties were sold to foreign buyers. The overall number of house sales to foreigners has risen from 4.24% of overall sales in 2009 to 8.12% in 2012.

Although the British are still the biggest buyers of Spanish property, catching up fast are several other nationalities:

It is interesting to see the differences between nationalities in the type of property they prefer. For example, purchasers from the UK are still happier than most other countries to buy new-build property. However, for the French, used property is twice as popular as new. The Germans also tend to go for a home with at least one previous owner.

There are differences in property size preferences too. For example, Swedish, Belgian and French purchasers are more likely to seek out a smaller property than someone from the UK or Germany.

It’s the coastal properties which are attracting the most foreign interest. The Canary and Balearic islands come out with the highest number of Spanish property purchases followed by the Valencian and Murcian regions.

If we drill down further we can see that foreign purchases are very much concentrated in a relatively small number of provinces. Alicante still heads the league table, attracting 33.39% of the foreigners who bought, followed by Tenerife (27.19%), Girona (25.35%), Baleares (24.95%) and Malaga (23.56%).

At Ábaco the range of different nationalities coming through our doors is evidence of these trends. English, Swedish, Russian, German, French, Italian, Dutch and, of course, Spanish are spoken in every department and we are used to dealing with the peaks and troughs of property preferences across the world.

If you are wanting to buy or sell your property it is useful to be aware of the broad range of people who might be interested in your house or who are joining you in the search for their dream Spanish home.

*Registradores de España:

http://www.registradores.org/