New Year, market remains strong

THE latest figures on the Spanish property market indicate that there was a cooling down during October after months of back-to-back double digits increases. Home sales fell by 1.7 per cent from September but were 2.6 per cent higher than October last year.

House prices rose by 1.5 per cent and the year looks set to close with prices roughly a third below their pre-crisis peak in 2007, still a huge improvement on recent years. 

Prices have risen 2.6 per cent across the year and are expected to rise by 5 per cent in 2017, with stable growth predicted until the end of the decade. They did, however, rise in less than half of Spain’s thousands of municipalities, confirming the two-speed market across the country.

Coastal and city properties have performed particularly well, shoring up losses in the interior. The luxury market, consisting of homes upwards of €1 million did fantastically well in 2016 with abundant interest from foreign buyers.

In 2017 expect to see the emergence of ‘servicers’ a new player in the real estate game. They are the privileged partners of banks and offer various financial packages to buyers and homeowners that the banks are shifting away from.