House sales for Spain in June

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Housing Market Data

House sale data issues yesterday supports other statistical information coming out of Spain that the economy is recovering.

Along with mortgages in Spain being on the increase the level of homes sold in June increased by 17.6%.

The percentage increase from the same month of the previous year for all transfers of Spanish property rights was up 15.6% and sales of all properties including commercial and Rustica buildings was up 18.8%.

Increase in house sales due to economic factors

A fluid housing and commercial property sector indicates confidence within Spain is growing. New buyers are coming to the market and residents of Spain, with falling unemployment, and realistic house prices are beginning to step up activity.

The housing market is being helped by very low Euribor rates, which most loans in Spain are linked to and falling margins above Euribor being charged by the Spanish Banks.

Sales of Dwellings

In total 30,578 residential houses were sold and recorded at Land registry as a change of ownership in June. This was 3.8% up on May of 2015. The growth May to June of 2015 at 3.8% was 9.8 points higher than of 2014 and is the only year in the last 5 years to show any positive growth between these two months.

Of all house sales, 21.7% were new builds and 78.3% were resales. This is a complete reverse of the trend during the boom years where off plan properties overtook used housing in terms of volume of sales.

New homes, since seeing some revival last year, have dropped away again dramatically with most buyers in Spain seeing more value in resale’s than new builds. Whilst new build sales were up slightly in the month of June when compared to May only 6.6k were sold in June compared to 10.6k in May of 2014 and resales conversely sold 23.9k compared to 17.2k of 12 months ago.

The number of transactions on new builds was down 30.6% and the number of transactions on resales up year on year by 44.5%.

Variations by Region of Spain

Andalucía had the highest absolute number of sales of dwellings in the month reaching 6,129 and up 23.8% on last year. Galicia was the only region down on the year with sales dropping 1.5%.

Behind Andalucía, Cataluña sales were 4,315, Valencia 4,659, and Madrid 4,362.

The Canaries, the Balearics and Valencia had the highest level of sales per inhabitant all reaching over 100 sales per 1000 residents and were closely followed by Andalucía at just below 100. These areas benefit from foreign purchases buying and owning property in Spain.

Improving home loan activity

In line with increasing purchases, nonresident Spanish Mortgages are also on the increase. Recent analysis of business for International Mortgage Solutions, who have arranged mortgages in Spain for over 12 years, showed May and June were the best completion months in over 7 years with both months having increases in excess of 70% when compared to the same months of the previous year.

Other titles

Whilst most of the news remains positive other titles being transferred, which include foreclosures, is still making up a high percentage of all rights of transfer. Whilst 30,578 homes were sold, 17,654 properties changed hands under the other title sector. As yet the INE in Spain do not breakdown the other titles which include areas other than judicial or debt foreclosures but by far the biggest portion of this table is where it relates to foreclosures.

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