Property

According to the Bank of Spain, residential property investment is set to top 4.5% of Spain’s GDP by the end of the year. “This is similar to the average in neighbouring countries, but far below the 12% registered in 2007,” writes the bank in a recently published report.

The report reveals that house prices, which experienced a drop of 45% in real terms from their peak in Q3 2007 to their low in Q1 2014, continue to grow. They increased by 16% up to September, although there are huge discrepancies in price growth rates depending on the area. In its latest quarterly report on Spain’s economic situation, the Bank specifically highlights Madrid, Catalonia and the Balearics as the regions with the highest price growth.

When the type of property is taken into account, growth in prices for new builds has been slightly higher than for resale properties since hitting all-time lows in 2014, although the difference has been less noticeable over the last few quarters.

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Although the Brexit process is shrouded in mystery for the most part, it doesn’t seem to have dampened British taste for Spanish property; in fact transaction volumes have increased almost 15% so far this year.

The issue seems to be that not many British buyers were aware that there is no problem buying property in Spain whether you’re from an EU country or not. The Swiss, Norwegians, Americans and citizens of many countries outside the EU, have all been buying property in Spain without problems of any kind for years. Most property professionals in Spain feel that it will be just the same for Brits post Brexit but probably easier.

Here we take a closer look at the Brexit issues causing particular concern among buyers at the moment:

Healthcare

At the moment British tourists are covered if on holiday in Europe or if you have retired. If healthcare arrangements change this could be a factor for anyone thinking of spending their retirement in Spain, particularly…

Home sales, mortgage approvals, and consumer confidence are all recovering but there’s still the problem of the glut concentrated in areas with low demand, says the real estate consultancy Acuña y Asociados in a new report. Including bank repossessions, the Spanish property market still has 1.36 million empty properties looking for a buyer, down from the 1.7 million in 2010.

The report estimates that Spanish banks have 973,000 properties for sale, plus land for 1.5 million new homes, although a large percentage of these plots will never be built on because of poor location or quality.

The supply of homes for sale piled up at the start of the Spanish property crisis, caused by over-building and falling demand. It reached its peak in 2010 with 1.7 million properties on the market, and since then, 348,000 properties – new-build and resale – have been sold. At the end of 2016, there were 1.36 million unsold homes thanks to the fall in the number of completed properti…

New laws are being created to ensure that owners of holiday accommodation have civil liability insurance and guest registration in attempts to regulate Spain’s incredibly competitive short term rental market. This comes on the back of the 5th consecutive year of record-breaking tourism numbers in the country that is the most popular tourist destination in Europe.

The legal offensive against the growing supply of irregular tourist lets is designed to raise the quality of tourist rentals and stamp-out below standard accommodation. The new decree will regulate the characteristics, technical requirements, operating system, prices and booking procedures used in tourist accommodation by introducing mandatory registration with the Ministry of Tourism.

Airbnb Removes 1,000 Unregistered Tourist Properties in Barcelona

In response to the crackdown on illegal holiday properties, the well-known portal Airbnb has identified and removed more than 1,000 tourist rentals from its …

The average price of housing in Spain continues to increase, according to all studies and reports from the national statistics office (INE) and the Association of Notaries. Madrid is one of the city’s recording the biggest increases and in some areas; the cost of apartments is already very close to the highest values recorded in the boom, according to an analysis of real estate research firm Urban Data Analytics, (UDA).

UDA found that the apartments in the centre of Madrid and its suburb of Salamanca already cost just 2.5% less than the historical highs recorded in 2007 and in the suburb of Justicia the gap is reduced even further to just 1%.

The Data from All of Spain’s Real Estate Authorities tell the Same Story

The National Housing Institute’s Index of House Prices (IPV) for the second quarter of the year has shown an increase of 5.6% (from 5.8% in resale housing and 4.4% in new); the August Tinsa index reported an average increase of 4.7% at the national…

According to reports in the Spanish media, transaction levels for resale homes in the country have returned to peak levels of 2007, due to a shortfall of new homes in the construction pipeline.

In the second quarter of this year, 119,408 flats and buildings changed hands, of which 99,343 were resale or secondhand homes, the same level recorded before the property bubble burst. In contrast, the market for newly built homes remains flat with just 20,065 transactions, some way from the 110,000 new units sold in the first six months of 2007.

What has become evident is that the intensified activity in the resale property market reveals strong and rising demand for homes in Spain. In the absence of supply of new homes, buyers are being forced to find what they’re looking for on the resale market, now showing the strongest signs of price growth in the country.

Spain’s Resale Market Returns to Pre-Crash Buoyancy

The total number of property transactions so far in 20…