Laurence Dollimore
SPAIN has had its best quarter for property sales since the 2008 financial crisis.
Some 121,561 units were sold in the third quarter of this year, a 16.7% increase on last year, according to the development ministry.
It’s just shy of 2008’s third quarter when 122,949 units were sold.
From September 2016 to September 2017, some 516,643 homes were sold, an increase of 15.8% compared to the previous twelve months.
All the autonomous communities registered increases in the number of home sales in the third quarter of the year.
The highest increases were La Rioja (+ 32.9%), Cantabria (+ 31.9%), Murcia (+ 25.6%) and Andalucia (+ 23.6%).
Ceuta and Melilla also registered significant increases (+ 26.3%).
Transactions carried out by foreigners resident in Spain experienced year-on-year growth for the twenty-fifth consecutive quarter.
Specifically, the increase was 17.6% compared to the third quarter of 2016, totaling 20,257 purchases.
Likewise, purchases made by foreigners, both residents and non-residents, reached 24,009 operations, which represents 17.4% of the total.
By province, the ones that registered the highest number of sales by foreign residents were Alicante (4,619 operations), Málaga (2,429), Barcelona (1,937), Madrid (1,564), Valencia (1,183) and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1,175).
Sales are up because prices are well down on the same period. There is not a recovery back to 2008 in terms of prices, and that is the big difference here.