Country-property-GaucinTHE latest Malaga property sale data confirms the market has gone steadily up over the past year.

We have seen a rise of over 14% in July’s transactions, the biggest increase for the same period since 2008.

Spain’s Statistics Institute has just revealed figures for July’s residential property sales and Malaga province ranks above both the regional and national averages, registering a 14.5% increase compared to 2014.

A total of 2,228 Malaga properties were sold in July compared to 2,313 in July 2008 – it’s still well down on the pre-crisis total (3,599), but is the best result for seven years.

Interestingly, less than 20% of homes sold were new.

This reflects the relative lack of new-build properties available in the market now, although it looks set to rise over the rest of 2015 and next year as more new developments are completed.

Nationally, house sales increased by 13.9% in July compared to 2014, reaching 32,700 deals for the year, to date.

Although slower than June – which saw a 17% increase on the year before – July’s rise marks the eleventh consecutive month of growth.

Andalucia remains property buyers’ most popular area in Spain, with almost 6,750 deals completed here, followed by Catalunya, Valencia, and Madrid.

Malaga alone accounts for almost a third of the region’s total marking a comeback  since the all-time low of March 2013 when less than 1,000 homes changed hands.

Over 14,500 properties have already been sold in the province in the first six months of this year, 13% higher than last year and 30% more than in 2013.

After six years of falling house values, Spanish property prices are firmly on the rise, with a 4% increase in average prices in the second quarter of 2015 compared to last year.

This is not only a 1.5% increase over the first quarter of the year, but is also the largest jump since the end of 2007 and is the fifth successive three-month period in which house prices have risen. New properties increased in value nationwide by almost 5%, while the price resale homes climbed by some 3.8%.

All this is clearly good news for vendors who held on to their homes during the darkest hours of ‘la crisis’.

But it should also come as a reminder to buyers who may have had doubts about entering the marketplace over the last few years that now is the time to move, before prices climb any higher.

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17 COMMENTS

  1. “After six years of falling house values, Spanish property prices are firmly on the rise”

    I’ve talked to half a dozen people who have homes for sale, and all are on the market at (well) under their original values. I talked to my local agent and he said that all of his properties are on the market at under their original values. I’ve heard of no one who has increased the price of their property – this article does certainly not square with actual market conditions across the Andalucía and seems to refer to one little corner of the Costa del Sol – where is the value in such an article?

  2. Sorry Fred, but your opening salvo is taken out of context – if you read the rest of the sentence as posted in the article (i.e “. … a 4% increase in average prices in the second quarter of 2015 compared to last year.” ). Please don’t kvetch about the value of an article if your comment is equally valueless.

    • Brigitta you seem to take the comment personally, strange that. Nothing is taken out of context and I did read the entire article. The whole sentence you mention is “After six years of falling house values, Spanish property prices are firmly on the rise, with a 4% increase in average prices in the second quarter of 2015 compared to last year” and my response would be that I have seen no such “firm rises”. This article is talking about a little bubble over Marbella way and nowhere else. Andalucía has thousands of properties at knock-down prices currently and I know of no one who is raising the price of their property to get a sale; quite the contrary in fact and that’s just common knowledge.

    • John, there may be exceptions but I can tell you it’s not the norm and certainly not a trend. I have friends in Nerja and they tell me the same thing. You’ll find the same houses with all different prices on Spanish estate agent websites – it’s all unregulated.

  3. John Lightfoot,
    who is going to listen to you when you have zero experience of living in Spain unlike Fred who does and has done so for many years.
    And who the hell is going to listen to someone who makes his money from selling houses. I’ve never met anyone in any country and I’ve lived in a few who ever believed a word that estate agents say.

    • I am so sorry Stuart for upsetting you. You are totally correct I have never owned a property in Spain so therefore have no experience at all. I am only doing what I would do in the UK and that is look at estate agents when I wish to purchase a property.

  4. Why should we believe the doomsters here when they’ve been so wrong on the Spanish economy over the last years? Spain to be kicked out of the Euro? Spain to be locked out of the borrowing markets? Unemployment never to fall and British expats to be “rescued” and sent back to the UK? Sorry, it’s almost impossible to listen to the likes of Stuart and Fred when they’ve been so consistently wrong over the years. Still no doubt Stuart from his holiday business in France will tell us we should listen to him – after all he’s told us that the Spanish national dishes like paella or gazpacho are really just meat and chips… Still, to be fair, you shouldn’t listen to any anonymous comments here. Stick to reading informed commentators on the market (in both English and Spanish), and follow facts and trends – not some anonymous hater.

    • Squiddy, the only hating you’ll see here is when you offer inaccurate and misleading advice. Your own business failed in Spain spectacularly, and so no one should listen to you. You are confusing ancient discussions about events that were quite real at the time, with actual after-the-event happenings. Your constant off-topic replies show you have nothing to say and no real-world experience. As you have consistently demonstrated, you cannot even use a single alias on this website, and that makes your input untrustworthy.

  5. Quiddy do you just paste this drivel. All your posts are the same.

    If there a Property bubble in Marbella it must have happened in the last month, it is not what I see. You may see prices going up on the web but there’s no reliable information as to the selling price. Some idiots continue to put up prices every year. If this Agent is correct the top economists should tear up all the their theories for the last 100 years. Ha ha.

  6. This estate agency has a mere 550 or so properties on it’s books from it’s CDS office, another agent with several branches only has 20,000 or so on it’s books although some are duplications from several multi listing agents, (trouble is often with a different price to each other) How different then to UK agents who normally expect to have 40-50 properties per branch yet so many currently have 15-30 per branch.

    Since we’ve owned near Marbella for 16 years now, there are distinctly 2 markets on the CDS as most informed posters here point out (not haters as labelled). One if you’re a buyer where you’re told ‘the market is rising, a deposit will secure your chosen property’, ‘Don’t delay etc, Russians, Chinese, Inuits, Vulcans etc are buying’, ‘the market has bottomed’ (yet again how many times in the last few years have we heard that?), and then there’s the sellers’ market.
    ‘There’s still so many properties on the books’, ‘You must be realistic’, ‘Expect lower offers if you want to sell, maybe 10-20% lower than asking price’, ‘you need to be in a prime location to sell’ ‘Inland is very slow’.

    Unfortunately Richard aka EDS, GUAEQ, ED, GUAQ, has never bought in Spain and still yet to visit the CDS.

    However, the Balearics being a smaller niche market is bearing up much better than mainland Spain and that’s a more sensible investment.

  7. Squiddy,
    once you were good for a laugh but sadly I must tell you now that you need to seek some help
    I have never said that I have a ‘holiday business in France’ = irrational.
    I have never said that the Paella & Gazpacho, recipes with their origins in the Mahgreb are meat and chips = irrational.
    And sadly you are projecting your horrendously inaccurate statements about Spain onto Fred and myself, who like many others have been totally accurate about Spain – don’t you have a life to live?

  8. Stuart, I can understand your annoyance at being found out, but any chance of some honesty? It only takes a quick search on the OlivePress site to find your constant references to “Yes meat and chips is the norm all over Spain”. I’ve pointed out before that foods “like gazpacho, cocido, fabada, paella, gambas al ajillo, ensalada mixta, espinacas con garbanzos, pulpo a la gallega, zarzuela, empanada and even tortilla” are more the norm and definitely not meat and chips. Either you are ignorant of the standard dishes in Spain or you’re doing your normal “talk down” Spain with your gang here. And are you now denying you live in France (you admitted this before), and indeed that you don’t rent out a place in Burgundy?

  9. Meat and chips is very common in Spain wherever you go. Never any fresh veg either. Even decent restaurants have the same pork chop and chips, pork loin in pepper sauce, if you are lucky you may get a jacket potato, but normally frozen chips..

  10. On the Spanish Property website News section is a topic which says ‘No shortage of homes for sale in Spain’ written by R R Acuna and associates. Their latest figures of numbers of homes still for sale is 1.6 million, with over 600,000 rated as unsaleable. This large inventory is not going to disappear soon!

    As they are analysts rather than agents or developers their figures could be construed as more believable than those who put out their spiel, some years ago their figure of homes for sale was 2 million, so a long long way to go yet. Not forgetting that more homes will come on the market meanwhile. This should tell prospective purchasers to be wary of hype, no need to rush in, and to make offers below current sales prices.

  11. Squiddy,
    thanks for confirming my previous posts. Your pulling recipes that are specific to parts of Spain you have never visited and know nothing about.

    I heve never denied that I moved to France, sick to my stomach with the corruption and seeing clearly that Spain and it’s insane property market would crash (next one is the UK). Burgundy – where the hell did you pull that one from.

    You failed to establish a business in Spain but unlike others that was down to your own lack of ability. have you ever thought about goig to night school – you might just make a second rate comedien.

    Mike – it’s quite obvious you are’nt an immobilier – telling it like it is and no b/s.

  12. Oh dear, Stuart is pretending to be a mind reader – and he’s wrong as per normal. Not that I needed to have been in Valencia (for paella) or Andalucia (gazpacho) or Asturias (fabada) ETC (I have but fail to see why the gang are upset I have) AS THEY ARE COMMON DISHES ON MENUS DEL DIA IN CITIES ALL OVER Spain, and you can even get them in the UK and in supermarkets already made! I know you have obviously not been to Spain for many years Stuart, but you can find bar-restaurants run by Galicians even in cities like Valencia and Barcelona I notice you don’t deny the Burgundy connection (Viserny isn’t it?) but even if you now live in another part of France, it’s strange you spend so much time on a Spanish board. Life that bad in France? Surely not?

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