Dilip Kuner
CORONAVIRUS restrictions may have kept people at home, but while there they have been investigating moving house.
Two of Spain’s leading real estate websites – Idealista and fotocasa – have seen a surge in property searches over the past three months.
For fotocasa this translated into 40% more traffic in June compared to the same month in 2019.
The company’s communications director Anais Lopez said: “All the real estate agencies we work with say they’re seeing unprecedented interest in changing homes.”
Benat del Coso, speaking for Idealista added that online mortgage brokerage requests over the summer were 20% per cent higher than normally seen in the same period.
These figures come as a relief when compared to the stark data reported by the bank of Spain for April, May and June.
Across Spain house sales plunged 43% to 75,000 in the second quarter. Price growth slowed in the same period to a quarterly rate of 0.44% according to the College of Registrars, although there are signs that prices have started rising faster through the summer.
