The sale of housing by foreigners is slowly recovering after the mobility restrictions derived from the coronavirus . The latest data from the College of Registrars put the weight of these buyers in the national market at 10% at the end of the second quarter of the year. The result represents a slight improvement compared to the 9.7% of the previous quarter, but it is still at low levels of activity.
In absolute terms, there has been an increase in purchases by foreigners, exceeding 13,600 operations, compared to the more than 12,200 registered during the first quarter of this year .
The nationalities that lead purchases have been British (9.5%), with a significant decrease compared to the previous quarter (12.11%) . In fact, the result is a record low. They are closely followed by Germans (9.0%), Moroccans (8.3%), French (7.0%) and Romanians (6.1%).
The results of purchases by foreigners by autonomous communities have been led by the Balearic Islands (29.8%), the Canary Islands (23.9%), the Valencian Community (19.5%), and Murcia (14.7%) .
Registered sales
Between April and June, 137,204 house purchases were registered in the property registers, with an increase of 6.2% over the previous quarter. In new housing, 26,384 purchases and sales have been registered (a decrease of 6.4% over the previous quarter). Used housing registered 110,820 operations, with a quarterly increase of 9.7%.
With respect to the same quarter of 2020, the interannual increase in the second quarter was 8.7%. In the last twelve months, 482,428 house sales have been registered, figures of a certain normality, since it no longer includes the second quarter of 2020, of strict confinement.
Flats and single-family homes
The proportion of flats and single-family dwellings brings the results closer to the levels prior to the pandemic: the sale of dwellings has been disaggregated into 80.0% of collective dwellings (flats) and 20.0% of single-family dwellings (historical maximum of the 22.5% in Q4 2020), a still remarkable result given that historically single-family homes did not reach a 20% share. After the last two quarters, the proportion between both modalities seems to stabilize at 80% for flats and 20% for single-family homes .
House price
Median house prices continue to show notable strength in both its quarterly and year-on-year results. The 1,807 euros / m² in the second quarter represent an increase of 1.5% compared to the previous quarter, caused by a rebound in used housing (3.2%). On the contrary, there was a decrease in new housing (-2.1%), which showed a more favorable evolution in previous quarters.
It should be borne in mind that new housing barely represents 2 out of 10 operations and sometimes includes purchase agreements with an average advance of two years , so they do not always reflect the current behavior of the market, therefore the evolution of the prices of used housing.
The annualized results show a less favorable behavior, in which for the whole of Spain the 1,763 euros / m² average price has meant an interannual adjustment of -0.4%, caused by a decrease in used housing (-2.5 %) since new housing registers a 6.2% increase in prices.
By autonomous communities, in the second quarter, the highest average prices were located in Madrid (2,820 euros / m2), the Basque Country (2,781 euros / m2), the Balearic Islands (2,731 euros / m2) and Catalonia (2,268 euros / m2). In the opposite direction, the lowest prices were registered in Extremadura (717 euros / m2) and Castilla – La Mancha (813 euros / m2), the only communities below 1,000 euros per m2.
Average surface of the new purchases
In the second quarter, the average surface area was 101.8 m2, which represents a reduction of 1.1% compared to the previous quarter, which was the maximum in the historical series (102.9 m2) for the housing complex.
In new free housing, the average transferred area has reached 110.7 m2, close to the historical maximum that was reached in the previous quarter (111.4 m2). For its part, used housing reached an average surface area of 100.3 m2, with a decrease of 1.1% compared to the historical maximum of the previous quarter (101.4 m2).
Consequently, there is a slight adjustment trend to previous levels, with less surface area, following the trend of less purchase and sale of single-family homes, those with the largest surface area.
